Procurement Newsletter • Procol | February 2024
Welcome to the February 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
Whirlpool Corporation | Gurugram, India
Head of Procurement
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Director of Sourcing and Procurement
DSJ Global | Salt Lake City, USA
Vendor Manager
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Strategic Sourcing Officer
McDonald's | London, United Kingdom
Procurement Lead Essentra | Houston, USA
Director, Sourcing Strategy Otsuka Pharmaceutical Companies | Princeton, NJ, USA
Head of Sourcing & Procurement Wing | Palo Alto, CA , USA
Vice President of Supply Chain & Procurement Insomnia Cookies | Greater Philadelphia, USA
Director of Purchasing Levy Restaurants | Seattle, USA
Vice President Strategic Sourcing Cornerstone OnDemand | Remote, USA
ProcureCast: Episode 3
About Speaker - Ash Shetty, Montgomery County's CPO, manages a $1.5 billion annual spend and $5 billion overall spend. With five years of experience, he oversees procurement for a large community near Washington DC, handling diverse needs from office supplies to critical infrastructure like buses and fire trucks. Ash excels in navigating complex local government procurement challenges. LinkedIn.
Covered in this episode
- Ash's Introduction and Journey
- The top 3 biggest challenges as a public procurement leader
- His procurement roadmap for 2024
- Considering digital procurement and workflow management tools
- Advice for young procurement professionals
Watch this episode
Full Transcript
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Hi everyone welcome to Procol podcast today I have Ash Shetty with us Ash is a CPO of Montgomery County and he manages a spend of couple billion dollars and uh he's been and we're lucky to have him today uh on Procols podcast as a background Procal is a Next Generation spend management uh procurement technology company and um yeah we are excited to learn more about Ash on his journey and experience uh as a leader Ash I would love to start off with um you know introducing you to the audience um if you could you know introduce yourself yeah
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): Thank you uh thank you for having me it was great meeting you in Procurecon and then you know having the the ability to set up this call for us to to discuss procurement of my passions uh my name is Ash I have uh been the chief procurement officer of Montgomery County Maryland for about five years uh Montgomery County is a suburb of Washington DC it's a relatively large community uh by American Standards of over one million people we spend uh1 and a half billion dollars a year uh we have an overall spend under management of $5 billion and uh yeah if if you know anything about local government we deal with all sorts of urgent matters everything from buying um large buses and fire trucks to buying things as uh tiny as paper pins for our for our offices or even bullets for the guns that our police officers would use
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Very interesting I would love to hear more about your journey on where you started in procurement and we understand where you are now but how did you get into this
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): Sure so I don't think that my journey is particularly typical or atypical or or um special in any way in that I uh started off as a Management Consultant I worked with many companies and category managers on specific challenges that they had and you know it was one of those things which you you get to solve a lot of problems for a lot of people uh in a very quick amount of time and and it was a very interesting experience and then after almost a decade of doing that uh and Rising through the ranks and you know having various responsibilities including at one point managing our practice in Europe and I actually had to relocate there for a while uh I decided to take a position as a practitioner and became the chief procurement officer here in Montgomery County uh I'd say the one thing that's unique about it though is unlike a lot of people who will tell you that they ended up in procurement somehow and it's sort of like it just happened to them I think I made a very deliberate decision here when you think about it you ask most people you know when they're like in college or even getting their MBA how many of you want to be a CEO you'll have half the class at least an MBA case in the case of a business school raise their hands but if you ask people in um you know honestly do you want to work in procurement when I was studying most people probably didn't realize that was a function uh but if they did it wasn't their first choice yet what I realized is that procurement is is a very interesting function it is simultaneously the most externally oriented function in a company like it you deal with vendors you deal with Regulators you need to understand market trends um but then at the same time when you list the most internally oriented parts of an organization you'll think maybe HR uh but very quickly you'll say procurement because procurement has to understand all the Departments their constraints their their concerns their priorities even the Egos and politics within the Departments and you think about that that is the most internally and externally oriented role in in any organization and to be honest with you I'd say it's right up there with the CEO who has to worry about the board of directors shareholders employees unions if that's the case and it's a it's it's to me the closest you can get to being the CEO in a space where nobody wants to compete with you because nobody seems interested in in our beautiful function so i' I've really enjoyed the last 15 years now almost 16 years in procurement that I've uh that I've built a career in it
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Fascinating I want to start off with I think acknowledging the fact that most of our audience has looked at private procurement mostly public procurement is a completely different beast and I believe that uh it would be great to start off by understanding your top three biggest challenges as a public procurement leader context with context I think will be for people to
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): No absolutely so I and I appreciate that that that context though I will say that when you think about it really once an organization reaches a certain scale and size and complexity in all honesty the industry starts to become less and less relevant in the procurement space because you end up finding that are basically dealing with the same challenges around procurement speed around risk management around internal customer satisfaction around you know vendor uh relationship management whether what you want from them is a competitive advantage or just a study Supply uh it it starts to come down to very similar themes uh but in terms of my three biggest challenges um obviously one is this idea that procurement as a function is very often underutilized and even undervalued and so when you have a sudden shock to the system and it could be anything it could be a sudden geopolitical conflict like they're having in Ukraine and the Middle East today or it could be something like covid all of a sudden you realize that you do need procurement it is a very important function and perhaps a function that was not valued correctly uh so one of my challenges I would say has always been elevating the stature of the procurement function uh and that remains a challenge it is something that um you know i' I've always been an advocate for this function but I think uh especially in the world postco where where we really had very deep involvement with all aspects of operations during the pandemic uh I've tried to leverage that position now to to gain more resources and and honestly to have a team that is able to deal with future uh shocks like Co or or God knows what else we have coming um the other I would say is probably one that a lot of folks face uh but it has to do with restaffing um in my case right after the pandemic I'd say throughout the pandemic but especially after the pandemic I I had such a significant turnover that almost um like all except one of my managers was replaced so I I have seven or eight managers and only one of them is is from pre and more than 50% of my team turned over and this is just I think a phenomenon in in government maybe where a lot of people are reaching a retirement age a covid phenomenon but whatever it was my big issue was identifying Talent attracting that Talent again keeping in mind that this is government and it's you know not necessarily for everybody um and also this idea of uh how do I now upscale this talent and and like you know in the case of the the the manager thing that I mentioned I found myself now working with very capable individuals who had for the first time in their careers become managers five of them and I'd often when they'd ask me for for guidance or advice I tell them look this is what I would do but it occurred to me that what I would do isn't playing to their strengths it's playing to my strength so I started to change that conversation to be what would I do if I were in their shoes how would I develop if I were them and it took me to the point where last year I actually took myself through some leadership development I I I took couple of courses in in coaching uh just so that I could be more effective at managing my new managers uh but that that that was a challenge that I thought was an interesting way to overcome it it required me to have empathy for my staff but also a little bit of self-awareness for where I was struggling um and then the the last one I would talk about in in terms of the um the three challenges as as as as you asked uh would be simply um how do you continue to push the goals where you are achieving some success but you still need to do better so that idea of you know you reach a certain point where you can have change but the the marginal change is slower you're going to see diminishing returns um in my case a big part of our values is spending money locally uh spending money with minorities and it's just that constant challenge of how do I re-engage the community how do I find new ways to to to keep that momentum going um and that maybe is one of those that is particularly specific to government I don't know that a lot of folks in the private sector would list diversity spend as one of their top priorities but it is one for me
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Right no I think the points that you mentioned are quite relevant in today's time I often talk to teams where the Benchmark data is set and pushing boundaries become difficult so completely relate with the third Point as well yeah moving moving to the next question what are the solutions as align to your problems uh that you're considering for 2024 and yeah what does 2024 look like for you
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): So 2024 is going to be one of those things where you are um thinking about how do you you know everybody's talking about leveraging AI better um how do you take advantage of these new technologies I I posted on LinkedIn recently that I took our procurement Playbook uh and and essentially trained a generative AI tool to answer questions at the eth grade level so if you ask it how do I do business with this County or what does The Selection process looks like look like it'll actually give you these really simple answers and what's really cool is it'll answer them in multiple languages which which is is also helpful uh but you think about now what else can I do with this technology because I think we're just scratching the surface and this technology is going to be disruptive um the back end of that same topic is you also have to be very mindful of whether you are working with your vendors in a way that is accommodating their use of artificial intelligence in other words what are the data privacy uh and legal concerns that we ought to have as as Contracting officers that have to do with protecting our interests from a still burgeoning and somewhat ambiguous use case for data right uh so that's another another area where I think I'm going to spend a lot of time thinking through yes let's use and harness AI but let's also make sure that we are protecting what needs protecting uh and then the last in terms of my ch challenges is is something that I I alluded to earlier which is this idea of trying to take my new team and transferring their value proposition from uh something that may be seen as oversight to something that is seen as Insight uh rather than simply making sure that they're doing the procurement function checking the boxes of what steps need to be followed that these these very talented individuals are now actually using their critical thinking skills their ability to connect dots that nobody else can see uh and provide value that is beyond just the process hygiene uh value that they provide um you know it's this idea of simply trying to elevate the function from being seen as a compliance function to a consultant function within the organisation
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Interesting that you want to change the narrative entirely you know uh and in my just previous part uh I think the gentleman talked about how um becoming a problem solver is the key for procurement practitioners uh to keep their value and innovating constantly as a procurement practitioner otherwise going in the same uh field every day doing the same thing every day uh you need more challenges and I think just re repositioning procurement teams definitely helps
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): Yeah you know and I it's it's funny that that that that idea right of taking proactive ownership of problems anywhere you see them it's something that very few organizations are in a position to do because again they are focused on very specific silos but like I was saying earlier what drew me to this function is that we see everything we touch everything we can connect dots that if we're not connecting nobody else is going to even see them to be able to connect them so you do have to have that that proactive mindset of of of problem solving though where I've found very often procurement maybe fall short is either they don't see that as part of their job or they see themselves as issue spotters instead of problem solvers and really if we are going to be adding value we should be solving those problems and and and you know so like you were saying in your previous podcast I think most as stute procurement Executives will realize that that is the opportunity for procurement
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Yeah yeah definitely and I think what you had showed me uh on the previous call on uh the kind of practices you have already adopted um being transparent I think you've already influenced a lot of new things that I don't think the world has still seen uh so that's that's that's commendable right uh I'd love if you can you know provide insights to the audience on what what transformation you've already done so that they have context on these Solutions are actually Way Beyond what you've already done
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): Yeah yeah uh and thank you for that um so a couple of things there the first and foremost is when you think about any organization when you step into it it's very important for your team to understand where you're going what your vision is what direction you want to provide uh you know I used to ask this interview question about uh how would you describe a well-functioning organization and it occurred to me that I never actually thought about the answer to that question myself like I asked the question of other people but what how would I Define it and my ultimate answer was it is where everybody understands the mission and everybody feels empowered having understood the mission as an independent leader to help achieve it and the other part of that and they go hand in hand is if they're going to feel empowered As Leaders what are the guardrails that you put that allow them to perform at that level and what I that was the other deficiency I noted is we didn't have a set of core values uh core values are not just these things these flowery things you put on a wall or a poster these are actually things that will shape how decisions are made it will shape how people carry themselves in the workplace and it'll basically shape your your interactions with each other and so we identified four values we came up with uh efficiency because I always knew we'd have to do more with less and clearly Co proved that true uh that we would have to be empathetic because uh otherwise procurement is seen as a sort of monolith that just says yes or no in fact more often no uh that we would also have to be collaborative and because we work for the government we'd have to be transparent so with that in mind all the tools that were developed were designed to help us achieve the goals that I set for my team and in the way that the values would would would say was was they were consistent with one another so one of the tools that I'd showed you was our uh procurement tracker in fact to this day if you Google the word solicitation tracker it's the only one that comes up uh and it's a very userfriendly tool because as soon as you start to type in what you're looking for it'll give you the options and if you click on any random one what it'll show you is how you can follow where a solicitation is in its life cycle with us very often vendors will tell you their biggest source of anxiety is they put their hearts and dreams into this so this ation response and then they don't hear back quickly or they don't hear back at all sometimes they find out somebody else want it in our case you can obviously reach out to my my my my officers but you could also just enter the name of what solicitation you applied to and it'll tell you what step of the process it is in it'll tell you whether there's a delay or if it's going on time um it'll simply address Whatever anxiety you have and if it doesn't right alongside it is the contact information for the people you need to reach out to if you want to talk to somebody so so we're not trying to hide behind the technology but at the same time recognizing that people have this anxiety around the status of their procurements we put it out there and what's cool is it also memorializes past procurement so you can see various details about that procurement that would be helpful if you were bidding in a future instance uh and another tool very quickly just to you know I can talk endlessly about these tools I think in the in my last five years at this job we've won nine national awards for these types of tools but uh um and just to put that in context in the last 20 years before that the officer only won three of these Awards so we've clearly ramped up our ability to deliver on Innovation but um but the other tool I tell you about is I used to have a lot of people reaching out to me uh wanting to sell what they do to the government but honestly procurement folks are responsible for the procurement process not for the buying decisions that various departments would make we lack the subject matter expertise essentially so if you've ' got this great solution for how to manage waste or how to manage you know anything like Fleet utility a better software uh what we did is we created this thing called the vendor Innovation portal which allows you to share with us not only your ideas but also showcase how your ideas may be good for us in terms of savings good for us in terms of environmental impact good for us in terms of diversity or Equity uh just give you the opportunity to put your best foot forward and then we would present that to the departments on your behalf uh so just tools again to help people get what they need done get it to the right people um you know my most embarrassing Innovation was we put a calendar up on our website which gives you dates so when opportunities are coming do you and a lot of people were like wow this allows us to align to what dates you know like basically see what's coming and plan our lives accordingly this is so Innovative and I always joke that you know calendars have been around since like before juliia Caesar this is not innovative it's just empathetic that I'm putting it out there and you can see what I'm going to be doing and when uh but yeah uh thank you for acknowledging those those things I showed you they were just you know a few of the the tweaks we made here that have had very positive impact
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Yeah thank you again for sharing those insights uh I also want to take a moment to you know recognize that many companies or practitioners that are watching this work at companies of different sizes um and so they have uh different types of experiences with procurement technology and tools that can automate procurement functions so just to understand from you when when should a young company consider adopting a digital procurement tool and what tools should they consider initially
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): So this is probably a question that as a former Management Consultant I would have had the most fun with um because you know it's not a simple answer uh it's not like hey when you hit this pen number you should have adopted uh procurement Technologies to streamline your your your your processes um I'm sure there is a number where if you hit it and you've not yet automated it's already too late but I don't know that there's a floor number where this is when you need to get in uh but I think you know it is a it is a risk play it depends on on on the ex to which risk management is a priority it it probably is a play of the complexity of your processes and your organization as a matter of fact uh potentially also a complexity play in terms of the categories of spend that you manage the types of things that you buy um but I think if I had to give you my philosophical answer to this question it would be when the procurement function has decided that it has graduated from being a back room function and it is time for it to become a Bard room function when it realizes the value of procurement is not in the Tactical aspects of purchasing but in the Strategic aspects of of procurement uh where you are now creating outsized value for your organization because you're not doing the tedious work that could have been automated but brute forcing it instead you've decided your value proposition is in having that automated streamlined and now focusing on what insights you can deliver or what value you can deliver from that that process so um you know it'll come down to more than just um your technology needs it will it will probably be your understanding your resourcing and your capabilities from a staff's perspective understanding your processes and any deficiencies you may have uh and then of course your C state or whatever tools you use in technology um at as a minimum starting point what I would recommend is at least get a workflow management Tool uh the reason behind this is it'll allow you to understand what specific steps are bottlenecks in your process that maybe need further automation or or leveraging of technology or it will make you aware of what capabilities you need to develop whether it is through other investments in in in Talent OR or process modification but the point is it'll give you a starting point to identify exactly what your pain points are
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Right yeah that is very insightful workflow management tool right um what what all workflows should they consider uh automating or digitizing at the very beginning because this can get very messy from off it does
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): And and my take on this has has been start at the highest View and then start zeroing down closer to the problems as you identify them so at the at the highest level what we look at is when a department is interested in making a beginning of procurement and they send us essentially the request like hey we've secured the budget we want to buy XYZ from that time onwards what are the processes that you go through to walk them to the point where a contract is signed and services can be delivered requisitions can be cut off of it that there's depending again on how Matrix your organization is or or how how it's structured in terms of geographies or or business units uh or categories even uh it will create its own variations but that would be the the entry-level model because it'll basically allow you to understand how you provide value to your business partners starting off eventually you will probably need to also look into things like your rect to check process your and that goes into risk management and other things um but I think starting at a high altitude and then working your way down to the minutia is is more efficient than simply starting in some random location and saying what are we doing here
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Yeah yeah no you're right covering as much as possible from the upset could be very important
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): And it gives visibility to to other stakeholders who also care right in terms of like the number one question I used to get asked even internally is where's my stuff you know the and and the the simple answer would have been look in the systems but if that is not something that they can find then you need to show them what is happening uh I often say it's like if you travel in Uber and there's a map that's showing you where you're going and how much time is left even if there is a delay the person feels less frustration because there's some sense of control like I can see on this map where I am how much time is left and they're okay with it they understand that there's traffic or whatever uh but if you can't provide that level of visibility or you don't even have that visibility for yourself it's going to be really hard to manage the function
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): All right um lastly I just want to also uh get our audience as much value as they can and you know the final thing I'd ask you is what advice would you give to Young document professionals who want to become cpos um managing multi-billion dollar spend in couple of years
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): Okay so that's a that's a heavy question just because it requires you to think you know about the journey you've had and what are the things that worked for you and what are the things that haven't worked for you and I think my first piece of advice would be know for sure that procurement is what you want to do um I I have a a embarrassingly a love for this function even when I'm not doing my work I'm on LinkedIn writing comments about it just you know constantly thinking about things even in my spare time having to do with this function and I don't know if that makes me a geek or a nerd but the point is I I love what I do and that is an important thing because uh otherwise you're going to find even if you get to the top of this function that you're not getting any satisfaction from it you know it's not it's not scratching that itch that you have in life and you know that could be anything it could be uh intellectual curiosity it could be um the desire to do good for society whatever it is make sure that procurement is the space don't rise to the top of a function just because you're a smart person because you would be underutilizing your own potential but as you go along that Journey say you've decided this is the space for you or any space for that matter I'd say another thing that had been has been instrumental in my success is uh people you know I I I read this article that said 85% of jobs are filled through professional or personal relationships which is shocking to me that's a really high percentage uh but it also makes you realize the importance of of people in your lives and the most obvious thing people think of is I should have mentors and mentors are good uh but what I was equally if not more beneficial is Champions a champion is somebody who will actually risk their reputation to give you an opportunity to succeed uh they that manager who' say you know let's give this guy the project and when you get this project or this lady the project when you get that project you should make it your mission to make that person look good because they have basically put their reputation out for you and now you owe them the the the results that they bet you could deliver uh so find Champions find people who will give you these opportunities in in in work and in life because honestly you're not going to climb up if nobody else is helping you uh move up the ladder right and you know to sort of wrap all that up the last thing I'd say is measure your success not with the the things that that you want measure your success with the impact that you leave on others so if you're a leader measure your success in how many leaders you coached cultivated and developed and and their career years and how they're thriving if if if you're an entrepreneur a businessman don't count your Millions count how many millionaires you've created in your success and this way I think you'll have a much more meaningful existence Beyond just rising to the top of the function I think you'll you'll feel like when you've gotten there it was worth it
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): Well that that's about it from us uh today Ash thank you for joining us for this you super cool procurement podcast and uh look forward to hearing more from you
Ash Shetty (Montgomery County): Yeah absolutely you too G of good luck in your endeavours and obviously if I can ever be of help you know how to reach me
Gaurav Baheti (Procol): thank you um thank you.
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