Revamped agenda unveiled for ProcureCon Indirect 2012 meeting

ProcureCon Indirect, Europe’s premier indirect procurement conference, returns on 24^th-26^th April, promising three days of networking, benchmarking and debate among 300 of Europe’s leading indirect procurement leaders.

Building on the success of last year’s indirect sourcing conference, the ProcureCon Indirect team have put together an entirely revamped agenda, focusing only on the critical issues affecting CPOs and senior indirect procurement professionals. Confirmed speakers include:

Lance Younger, Global Co-CPO & EMEA CFO, Goldman Sachs

Kees Gerretse, CPO, Group Director Procurement & Transport, Tata Steel Group

Philippe Robert, Sourcing Vice President, Alstom

Sven Jacobs, Head of Global Strategic Sourcing, Lonza AG

Fabien Krawczyk, Group Head of Indirect Procurement – Professional Services, Groupe La Poste

Alan McQuade, SVP EMEA Supply Chain Management Executive, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Ed Worthington, Senior Procurement Manager, Virgin Holidays

Heather Rodgers, Chief Procurement Officer, Centrica

Michael Woodburn, Managing Vice President of Business Analysis and Marketing, Capital One

Herve Menassol, Global Capital Purchases Associate Director, Procter & Gamble

Gail Roberts, Head of Supply Chain and Procurement, Royal Mint

And many more – see www.procurecon-indirect for a full list

Each speaker has been specially chosen to speak on a topic relevant to the indirect sourcing projects they’re currently working on. Alan McQuade, SVP EMEA Supply Chain Management Executive, Bank of America Merrill Lynch describes his current challenges and areas of interest:

Top Projects  for 2012:

At Merrill Lynch, and across much of the financial sector, vendor oversight across the lines of businesses and regions is receiving a much greater Regulatory focus than previous years.  This is leading to a range of internal programmes and related change activity to ensure the regions and businesses have clearly evidenced controls, routines, oversight and understanding of their vendor and outsourced activity, and in terms of ensuring the correct escalation and committees are in place around such activity.  The EMEA Supply Chain group are central to the implementation activity around this

           

What do you foresee as being your key challenges in 2012?

The lack of growth in the Eurozone, and the reducing revenues across wholesale and investment banking has created a more visible and significant pressure on expenses, across the Bank.  This, combined with the increasing Regulatory focus around 3rd party activity is leading to an environment whereby the group have to come up with new and innovative ways to reduce our 3rd party cost base, whilst also ensuring a stronger control environment across all regions. 

How are you going to overcome  these challenges?

Rollout of enhanced vendor management routines, especially in our emerging markets environment, as well as close partnering with our business areas to manage down 3rd party reduction initiatives across a range of spend categories and business processes.

ProcureCon Indirect 2012 will take place at the Tower Guoman Hotel London on 24^th-26^th April 2012

Please visit www.procurecon-indirect to view the final agenda and explore some of the projects our other speakers are currently working on.