🎄 Procurement Newsletter • Procol | December 2023
Sourcing and procurement jobs and insightful podcast with the global procurement leader at Uber.
🎄 Merry Christmas from Procol!
Welcome to December edition of your go-to procurement newsletter, read by 3000+ global procurement and sourcing professionals.
Brief Introduction
I am Gaurav Baheti, founder and CEO of Procol.
Procol is a reliable, flexible and simple-to-adopt spend management platform that increases spend under management, 2x procurement efficiency, 50% cycle time reduction, and 2-10% overall cost savings. We’re a team of 125+ procurement enthusiasts, backed by tier-1 VCs, serving 100+ enterprises globally. Connect with me on LinkedIn.
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Procurement Jobs
If you are hiring for procurement and sourcing , get applicants from 3000+ procurement professionals. Shoot me an email with job description at gaurav@procol.io. Check out the latest job openings here-
Procurement Director
Jasper Ventures | Whitehouse, TX, United States
Head of Procurement
Yellow.ai | Bengaluru, India
Procurement Manager
Eightfold | Remote, United States
Strategic Sourcing Manager
Twilio | Remote, United States
Senior Global Technology Sourcing Manager
Block | Los Angeles, CA, United States
Senior Procurement Manager
Care Access | Remote, United States
Senior Manager, Strategic Sourcing
JLL | Chicago, IL, United States
Head - Procurement Strategy & Analytics
SunPharma | Mumbai, India
The Procurement Podcast
About Speaker - Brish Bhan Vaidya currently leads the strategic sourcing for the world's largest ride-hailing company, Uber, which operates in approximately 70 countries and 10,500 cities worldwide. He manages a little under $1B in procurement spend. Find Brish Bhan Vaidya on LinkedIn.
Covered in this episode
- Brish's Introduction and Journey
- The top 3 biggest challenges so far
- His procurement roadmap for 2024
- Considering digital procurement and sourcing tools
- Advice for young procurement professionals
Watch this episode
Full Transcript
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): [00:00:00] Hi, I'm Gaurav Baheti, uh, welcome to the Procol podcast, uh, Procol is a procurement technology company. Uh, today we have Brish Bhan, head of strategic sourcing Asia Pacific for Uber. Welcome Brish. Thanks Gaurav. Thanks for hosting me. Looking forward to having this conversation with you. Our audience would be delighted to learn more about your background. If you could introduce yourself.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So I have been in the sourcing and procurement domain for almost 20 years now. I work with companies like American Express, Accenture, Genpact, British Telecom and in my current role I am with Uber for last 7 years. seven years. If I talk about the type of roles I have done in sourcing, always feel proud to say that I never repeated the role that I've done in the previous company.
I started with, you know, selling the procurement solution, then got into operations, uh, which was mainly, you know, doing the sourcing events for, uh, you know, the private limited companies in India and PSUs in India. Then got into procurement operations with Genpact and then did some solutioning with them for some global customers.
After that, uh, spent around 3, 3 and a half years with American Express wherein they had a captive center in India. So, it was like building the capability and running those. Then I have done consulting with Accenture also for lot of global customers for around 3 odd years. Then did procurement transformation for British Telecom globally from India.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): And for last seven and a half years, I've been with Uber, uh, started, uh, you know, my job with, uh, setting up, you know, the procurement slash sourcing practice for Asia Pacific, uh, and to start with, I would say India, then grew that role up to APAC. And if I talk about, uh, my, you know, current role in Uber, I lead the strategic sourcing function for Asia Pacific, I run global buying center out of India, again, global as the word says, uh, we cater to every single country that Uber has.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): And then I look at, you know, the new capabilities that we should have in the procurement domain. So, I am the sourcing point of contact for any new initiative that Uber.
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Wow! I did not know that you have sold procurement solutions before. So, you have been on the other side of the table. Across the journey, you must have gotten various challenging assignments.
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): What has been your most challenging assignment
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): so far? So as I said, you know, I never repeated my role. So one of the reason why I've been doing that because I keep searching for challenges, you know, some challenges would come. I would say normally or actually, you know, which the company set up would bring.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Apart from that, I keep searching for it. I won't go back and talk about, you know, the initial challenges. Let me talk about Uber, which I see as. You know, uh, one company wherein I think I've sorted a lot of challenges, or I've seen a lot of challenges, right? So when I joined Uber around seven and a half years back, there was no procurement.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): In fact, there was no procurement department if I say [00:03:00] globally, there were just a couple of people who were working on high value deals and all, right. So when I was brought in, uh, the procurement was being done by, you know, every single employee in the organization and it was not through, I would say, tool also, right.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): We were deploying Coupa that time. So people were buying, you know, using the corporates, because we were in a high growth, uh, business. It was like, just get the material or get the service, which is required to run. So when I was brought in, I still remember, you know, uh, within the first hour of my joining, I was asked to negotiate a deal with one of, you know, the furniture manufacturer, global manufacturer.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): I was told, you know, we've been buying from them. Now we are building a new office. Can you talk to this supplier? And when I asked a very basic question, which any procurement person would ask, uh, can you give me the requirement? No, we don't know what a requirement is like, they are telling us that you need so much furniture.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So I think it's okay. I said, no, that's not how it works. But anyway, it went off pretty [00:04:00] well, uh, you know, using some procurement language, using previous skills, you know, uh, that thing worked for me. But I would say in last 7 years, what I have seen is, uh, that, you know, uh, company has been on growth path always, uh, the people that we work with, right, it was like taking work from them which they were doing and convincing them, right, and lot of them were freshers or, you know, Uh, I would say first time, uh, into a corporate world, right?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So for them it was like, you know, someone is taking away their job, right? Which was not the case. So the challenges started from that. And then, uh, you know, when procurement or sourcing got a reputation across, I would say the country, you know, the demand started coming from other APAC countries also. Can we also kind of, you know, engage sourcing team for this?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): And I was the only one. The moment I started talking about, okay, can I grow my team? It was not an easy, which I'm sure a lot of you will agree, right? Getting a headcount is not easy, so you have to show the business case. Fortunately, uh, I [00:05:00] would say leaders were good, uh, they kind of agreed that, okay, let's start expanding the team.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So I started looking at APAC and every country had its own challenges because, you know, company has different operating models across, I would say, all the countries and, you know, we have a lot of language dependency also in a couple of markets like, you know, Japan or even Taiwan and all right, so challenges kept coming.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Over the period of time when we were kind of, you know, solving things and we were becoming more popular. Covid hit and that was the time I actually had to lose a couple of folks from my team Uh, and the demand was coming from business. Can you go and you know Help us in bringing business back to normal by doing certain things, right?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So it always has been challenging I think from that day till today I think I always keep looking for challenges and now the team has also grown significantly. Came as, uh, came as the first person to, you know, lead the sourcing for India. Today I have a team of around 30 plus [00:06:00] people. We are catering global.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): And I think this is a message to my team also. Don't settle. Go and find where is the problem area. Whether it is procurement related, non procurement, we should not care, let's find a problem area and try to solve it thinking, you know, slightly strategically, slightly operationally. So I think that that's how I would say, you know, the journey has been.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Happy
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): to see that it keeps you going, uh, more so. I think more procurement professionals are built that way. Excellent procurement. I've seen this common across great procurement leaders. Um, challenges keep growing and their excitement keeps growing. What are the biggest problems you're looking to solve in 2024?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Some problems are Uh, you know, given by the management to solve some you have to find, right. And I would talk about the top three problems that I would say more or less we have kind of identified after looking at, uh, you know, a lot of surveys or customer experience. You know, it is not that customer is coming and saying why you have this, right.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): But we do hear, you know, that sentiment that comes along with, you know, [00:07:00] the appreciation that, okay, what was that element of expectation that they had, right. Considering those, uh, things. So, a couple of things that we are planning to solve in 24, 1. So we have, you know, our stakeholders coming to us through multiple channels today, right?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): They can give a phone call, they can send an email, they can, uh, you know, ping on Slack, or the opportunity can come in the form of a requisition by the time, you know, things would have been negotiated by someone in the business, right? So we want to solve those channels, right? So we want to create a front door in 2024, which is backed by, I would say, AI, so that the customer experience is great.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): We want every single person across the globe to land there, put their request, and then the system should help them, you know, directing or triaging their request to the right place. For example, if there is a sourcing opportunity, it should come to me. If there is already a catalog set, it should direct them, okay, here is a catalog, go and buy, and you have all the rights to buy.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): If it's just a legal work, it should direct them to [00:08:00] legal rather than, you know, bringing it to sourcing and then sourcing telling, oh, there is no opportunity for us work with legal and solve that. Second, uh, you know, we have seen a lot of success in, uh, the supplier performance management program in a couple of countries where we are running.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): There also I would say we actually initially thought that let's run a supplier relationship management program, which everyone talks about. But at the end of the day, if there is no commercial benefit coming, if the stakeholders or your internal customers are not telling you that they really saw a commercial value coming out of that, for me it doesn't work, right.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So that's where I think the team aligned, okay, let's change the program from SRM to SPM, Supplier Performance Management, let's get some money out of it. So we want to expand that because it has really worked for us. In fact, up to a level that we are now looking at a couple of sales agreements also wherein You know the BD and sales team have told us can you find efficiencies or can you look at you know The deals that we have done and very happily we actually could find, you know money from the sales agreement also guys You are [00:09:00] losing money there.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): How do you improve
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): this program or what is this program like? So
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): as I said, I think for business if you show them the money That is what they need, right? Apart from that, compliance and all, definitely everyone values, but sometime it doesn't come over and above, I would say, the money for the business.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Compliance is generally for, you know, taxation team says, okay, we should be compliant. Compliance team would say we should be compliant, but for a salesperson or someone whose job is to grow the revenue, for them money matters, right? So that is the approach that we took. So when we started looking at, you know, these sales agreement, focus was forget about, uh, you know, uh, whatever is written in terms of, um, uh, you know, the clauses, let's figure out things like what are the KPIs agreed and is there a penalty associated with that?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Was there any money given, uh, as a security deposit? And you know when we started looking at that, because that was our thought, we actually were very much on the target, we figured out, oh there is a money which has been given for one of the sales deal [00:10:00] as a, you know, security deposit. And we went to accounts payable team, do you know if that money was recovered?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): We could not find the trace of that, right? So we kind of went to the BD team, here is some money which is lying with someone, can you go and get it, right? Similarly, what are the KPIs and SLAs, because here we are the service providers and I am sure you will agree service provider is generally under, you know, that pressure that I should not go back and tell you, you know, the seller that, you know, you are not fulfilling your requirement because they might tell us that I do not want to work with you or I will find someone else because you are pointing fingers at me.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): We actually took that, uh, you know, uh, charge, we said, okay, let's find out where the buyer of the service is not meeting the targets, right? Or the KPIs, SLAs. So, that's what we showed and it actually worked for us. So,
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): you mentioned the front door and supplier performance program. Looking back for 2023, What do you think has improved
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): this year?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So we [00:11:00] launched Global Buying Center, uh, last year, uh, in Q4 and that was only for APAC. And APAC, we actually have great relationship with the stakeholders because we all are based here. We have been working with them for last seven years. That was one of the biggest challenge that we had. Okay. Now we are going global.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Uh, and, uh, you know, the, I would say story goes, you know, I would say to couple of years back wherein this solution was supposed to be given by a third party to us. And I had to challenge that internally saying, can I run this internally at maybe, you know, one fifth of the cost which we are getting externally and every SLA, every KPI, every savings number which has been committed, I'll need that, right.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So it was, I would say a challenge on me and my team here, how do we build and how do we deliver this? And everyone initially thought that Global Buying Center will work like assisted buying wherein, you know, people will be tagged to a category manager and they will do, you know, RFPs, they will do, you know, emails, but final decision will come from someone else.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): We actually changed that. [00:12:00] From day one, we were very much clear that we don't want to create an assisted buying center. We created a team here which was looking at spend which was non strategic and non tailed right. So the middle layer approximately 350 odd million dollars. So that actually has been working very very well for us.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So this is one major thing that I would say when I look back. has really worked for us and the focus definitely will remain how do we kind of take charge of unmanaged spend, maybe under strategic sourcing as a part of this team. Brish,
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): when should a company consider adopting a digital procurement and sourcing
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): technology?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Interesting. So, if I had to answer this question maybe 20 years back, I would have said maybe start planning. Maybe You know, when, uh, you have enough data in hand that your process is not efficient and if you have enough money, your IT department is ready to kind of, you know, invest and evaluate. [00:13:00] Uh, you know, it, it will take, you know, two to three years to deploy that.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So that would have been my answer, you know, I would say 20 years back today, I would say forget about the size of the company, you know, midsize company, they should adopt the technology today. reason. There's so many solutions available in the market and you are one of the solution and I'm sure your solution just like every other solution would be a SaaS based which means no investment required, pay as you go.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): You can deploy in maybe days to weeks. You can go at a module level, uh, module level rather than buying the full suite. So, you know, the ease of adopting a solution is so much today. That companies should adopt it today. Just like companies adopt accounting system. Why not a procurement system? Right?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Because accounting can give you a understanding of what you are spending, right? In terms of, uh, voucher values and all right, but where is the intelligence coming out of that? Someone still has to sit and [00:14:00] figure out, is there efficiency that I can create now that will only come from the procurement systems only, so they should adopt it as soon as possible and it's affordable.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): That's what I would say.
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): What is the first problem, do you think the. Company faces, uh, with, without technology and what it solves
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): after technology. If I specifically talk about procurement, the visibility to the spend that you're doing, that's the biggest problem. You might say that, you know, I am a good negotiator.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): I know my category. We buy X items every year. My, you know, purchase pattern is same. You can negotiate, but still the time you don't have visibility to the data. How will you kind of, you know, justify that you are actually doing a great work, right? You can talk about quality, but it has to be quantified. So that, that's where I think technology will surely help or has been helping always, right?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Giving that visibility to the data.
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): You know, a lot of young people watching this would be interested to learn more about [00:15:00] some insights you could give them on how you grew as a leader. What would be your two or three biggest advices? For the young procurement professionals entering the
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): procurement domain.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): So I would say, uh, for any procurement professional or any, any person right, invest in yourself. That is very much required. Right? And when we talk about investment, if I talk specifically about procurement, I'll, I'll give examples, right? Which I keep giving always. A doctor will always have a PhD degree slash m bs degree slash bds degree engineer will, will always have a be tech or a be.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Procurement, is there a specific degree written? Answer is no. I mean there are institutes who do it now specifically for supply chain or logistics but they are not many and not many people. Still turn up. So one need to invest in themselves, you know, and they should acquire some certification. They should acquire some knowledge through, you know, global universities in this domain.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): That's [00:16:00] one. Second, uh, you know, people should look at the 360 degree view of their job. I have seen people who are only focusing upon, you know, how much spend they are managing. I know hundreds of such people great on category. Great on negotiations, very poor on P2P systems. How is it possible that you don't know your, you know, downstream process or even upstream process?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Many people, they don't even know beyond a certain point what their company does, how operation planning happen, right? Broadly they know, okay, my company has, you know, this line of business, but I do not know how do they do it right. So, one need to look at the 360 degree right, that is another thing I would say go beyond the numbers up skill yourself no harm in you know going in a downstream process or going in a upstream process for some time learning it.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Companies do have programs wherein they say, okay, we can have shadowing program, you can spend a few weeks there. It doesn't work honestly. One has to invest a [00:17:00] quality time in, uh, learning those. That's the second advice, uh, I will, uh, give. And third, I would say, keep your ears and eyes open and, um, again, uh, you know, uh, go to the forums, talk in forums, listen to the forums, talk to the experts, that's how it works.
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): During interviews, whenever I have asked, you know, people, how do you kind of make sure that you know the subject, right, or investing yourself. Most of the people end up talking about, you know, LinkedIn. I won't say it's wrong, right? But why that's the only application which people talk about. We're not doing anything beyond that, right?
Brish Bhan Vaidya (Uber): Learn the subject. That's what I would say.
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Thank you for coming over today, Brish. It's been lovely chatting. And I hope the audience listening to this podcast find it inspiring as much as I did. Thank you for watching Procurement Podcast by Procol. Stay tuned for more. Visit Procol.io to look after Procol.io upcoming procurement technologies and solutions.