Get inspired. Drive change.

As the CEO of a tech start up, I have unique opportunities to speak with multiple procurement leadership teams interested in learning about technology and how it can support their efforts. We typically talk about their challenges, goals, and vision for the future. They are mostly consistent: simplicity, speed, agility, stakeholder-centricity, innovation, diversity, etc. 

The good news is that although they are at various stages of a digital transformation, most have already spent considerable time thinking about the future and are planning ahead. Everyone is acutely aware that the world is evolving rapidly and feel the increased pressure to innovate and get ahead of a potential disruption. There are several variables that contribute to a successful transformation which starts with strong and forward thinking leadership. Transformation is about changing the mindset, challenging the status quo, permission to take risk, embracing change, innovate, strategic thinking, partnerships, collaboration, agility and the list goes on. Technologies available today are not the sole driver of change, but they allow teams to scale by reducing low value workload and repetitive task so employees can focus on work that have greater impact for themselves, their peers and the organization.

Unfortunately, only a few know how to harness data and technologies available today and struggle to bring it into their organization. As one senior procurement executive told me at our recent procurement executive exchange, “We don’t need to be told to change. We need to know and learn how.” 

We are fortunate to have early adopters, visionaries and movers as customers. They quickly got excited about the potential of tealbook for their organization and our industry. They were the first ones to dig into our technology and drove the use cases for using our social media-like platform that uses AI to solve challenges that are not easily (or impossibly) tackled by people. The use cases have ranged, but they all solve a challenge that comes from large amounts of data residing in static internal systems of record, people's head and disconnected third party sources. For as long as procurement has existed, people have had to search, collect, assess and recommend (with various level of certainty) suppliers by pulling together information from multiple sources. We have spent countless hours searching for information (often known to someone else). We have wasted time on suppliers that were not suitable and put our team and suppliers through lengthy and expensive processes to extract repetitive information needed to support decisions. Until now, we have never been able to access this data from one place. We never really even considered how these sources of data could be aggregated, identify patterns and learn from one another to deliver insight with a greater level of confidence and trust needed to improve the speed and quality of supplier decisions (so critical to the business!). We couldn't have imagined that aggregating data from multiple trusted sources could help predict better quality suppliers and over time possibly reduce the need for RFPs all together...

At tealbook, our mission is to reduce the cost and friction of business to business partnerships by aggregating knowledge and delivering insight that employees can trust to improve and accelerate supplier-related decisions. It means leveraging existing suppliers by increasing tribal knowledge and visibility across the organization and/or accelerating supplier discovery by 90% and instantly expanding the supplier base x1000% to find new relevant supplier options. It can also make a much greater impact on diversity outcomes by increasing access, and enabling the tracking of efforts to find and include similar diversity options (for EVERY category).

As Walter Charles expressed at a recent ProcureCon Indirect conference, his team has gained efficiency and delivered 250% better results from using tealbook to power their supplier discovery efforts. These kinds of results could only happen because Walt had a vision and was 1) willing to challenge the status quo, 2) take a risk on people, 3) change the mindset and 4) adopt new technologies/tools.

In the spirit of helping the procurement community learn from each other about how to embrace transformation through data and technology, we brought together customers, advocates, and influencers for an executive exchange in New Jersey.

Each speaker shared how they are leading initiatives to leverage data and our technology to drive change for specific use cases relevant to their vision and corporate priorities. The presentations were followed by a dynamic discussion between 32 procurement executives:

? Chris Sawchuck, Principal and Global Procurement Advisory Practice Leader at The Hackett Group

? Doug Paul, GM Sourcing, Global Operations at GE

? Walter Charles, CPO at Biogen

? Bart Reekmans, CPO at SUEZ North America

? Jodi Kovitz, Founder and CEO of #MoveTheDial

Since the event, we have received hundreds of requests for a summary of our discussion. That amazing response proves that the procurement community is hungry for information and is ready to get ahead of the inevitable disruption still to come. Download this report to inspire yourself and your team to drive change within your own organization. Allow people around you to challenge the status quo, creating an environment that attracts strategic, ‘intraprenerial’, and innovative talent. This report and the event that spawned it are not about convincing you to adopt tealbook or any other specific technology. They are about fostering a mindset of change that will help define the future of our function.

Please reach out if you want to share your vision and explore opportunities to collaborate to support your efforts.

Stephany, CEO at tealbook

tealbook’s Vision

Reducing the cost and friction of business to business partnerships by aggregating knowledge that employees can trust and leverage to improve and accelerate supplier-related decisions.

About tealbook

tealbook uses AI technology to improve speed, trust, and quality of supplier related decisions. With its social media-like interface, tealbook delivers real-time relevant supplier information to all users across the organization from one place. tealbook automates, optimizes, enriches, and expands existing supplier information while making it easily searchable. tealbook significantly reduces the cost and effort required to maintain and access the supplier information so critical to procurement’s ability to meet enterprise demand for value, speed and agility. With tealbook, procurement teams leverage existing suppliers more effectively while accelerating the discovery of new trusted suppliers options required for innovation, diversity and new business requirements. tealbook is the platform for scaling procurement and moving it into the future.

Learn more about future initiatives and our ongoing discussions on digital transformation at www.tealbook.com and by following us on Twitter @tealbook