ProcureCon Indirect speakers give insight into the projects they’re working on, as well as the challenges facing them in 2012

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

Building on the success of last year’s meeting, the ProcureCon Indirect team have put together an entirely revamped agenda, focusing only on the critical issues affecting CPOs and senior indirect sourcing professionals. It’s truly an agenda by the industry, for the industry, with discussion topics chosen by a special Advisory Board made up of key figures from within the industry.

Prior to the conference, several of the event’s keynote speakers share some of the projects they’re currently working on, as well as the challenges facing them in 2012:

Heather Rodgers - Chief Procurement Officer, Centrica

Key project you are currently working on:

Overviewing Procurement transformation in time of change in Centrica for 10bn spend. Focus for 2012 is indirect spend drive for review, Talent Boards development of high potential performers, development of M and A strategic sourcing best practice and SRM roll out. Balance of growth agenda and costs efficiencies in business units.

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:

Build next generation of leaders to achieve high performing agenda , creatively challenging notions of value , seeing change coming and options ready on the table for ways forward and risk management being driven down the supply chain beyond immediate partners

How you are overcoming the challenges:

Overcoming by developing risk management processes and working with partners for transparency and involved in Group Risk Executive Committees for discussions early. Budget – kept money aside for development of people and attracting talent from graduates, other departments and external.

Tom Casey - Procurement Manager, BPO, Call Centres and Revenue Generation, Everything Everywhere

Key project(s) you are currently working on:

Currently working on a complex supply chain outsourcing deal which will be unique in the industry. Enormous challenges, but will place us in a better position in the end.

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:

Key challenge is maintaining market share and margins in a very competitive market.

How you are overcoming these challenges:

Overcoming this challenge will be by giving customers more value, not necessarily reduced costs.

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

Key project(s) you are currently working on:

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 you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:

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 you are overcoming these challenges:

Rollout of enhanced vendor mgt 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.

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