By Nikita Saharia Chaturvedi
Presentation of the 2015 Excellence in Purchasing Indirect Categories (EPIC) Awards is just around the corner. The ceremony takes place at a luncheon held during ProcureCon Indirect East in Orlando on February 12. A colloboration of ProcureCon Indirect and My Purchasing Center, the EPIC Awards recognize professional brilliance in indirect procurement.
My Purchasing Center recently interviewed the three finalists for the 2015 EPIC Rising Star Award: Marissa Gilbert, Senior Buyer, Marketing Services, at Campbell Soup Company; Megan Russell, Procurement Buyer at Unum and Lance Sprague, Strategic Sourcing Representative at American Financial Group. We recorded the interviews which are available as podcasts for listening on demand in our Media Center.
For the Rising Star Award, we ask procurement professionals to nominate an individual who is fairly new to indirect and shows promise in his or her career. A panel of judges of leaders in procurement selected the finalists, and ultimately, the recipient of the award.
Marissa Gilbert, Campbell Soup Company
Marissa Gilbert began her career as an intern at Bristol-Myers Squibb supporting the R&D Sourcing function. “I was interested in challenging myself to understand the research process and costs that go into developing a product as a solid basis for a future career in marketing,” she says.
Throughout the course of the internship, “my interest and respect for the procurement discipline grew,” Gilbert continues. “I was drawn to the broad company visibility and exposure, the ability to provide strategic thought leadership, the focus on internal/external relationship building, and last, but not least, the art of negotiation.” All this led her to pursue a career in Procurement with a focus in Marketing Services. Gilbert was nominated by Campbell Soup’s Vince Borzillo and Chris Constable.
Two years into her tenure with Campbell Soup, Gilbert was sought out by the Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Insights to lead several strategic projects. She managed a multi-million dollar project, from developing the service scope through to contract negotiation and implementation. This effort delivered more than $3.5 million in savings and will, most important, provide faster, more granular insights via data platform upgrades and a multitude of new services that enable a more focused approach on the company’s strategic growth areas, Gilbert tells My Purchasing Center. She has now taken this effort to the next stage by implementing a Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) program which has delivered additional cost savings and has re-positioned the partnership from transactional to strategic.
“The key is to carefully listen to the needs of the internal stakeholders and fully understand the strategy of the business,” says Gilbert. “You have to find a healthy balance between collaborating with your stakeholders and challenging them when necessary. It is imperative to ensure that you are always striving towards the best outcome for the company.”
To cultivate trust and credibility among stakeholders, Gilbert works to become an expert at the category she’s supporting. “This allows me to build strong relationships and provide value both strategically and financially,” she says.
For example, as the lead for the market research category, Gilbert expanded her knowledge by proactively working on a consumer market research project side by side with the Market Research team. “This helped me fully understand the consumer research process from contract execution to project completion,” she says. “Co-leading this project has enabled me to take a more informed and effective approach to negotiating these types of services and build stronger, more credible relationships with the supplier base and internal stakeholders.”
Megan Russell, Unum
Unum’s Megan Russell was nominated by William Bagley, Vice President, Global Procurement. In his nomination, Bagley says Russell plays a key role in several important procurement initiatives, including the launch of a new ERP system, Workday.
“I helped test the system to ensure that procurement functionality was ready to go live,” she tells My Purchasing Center. “I also led training sessions for business partners across the enterprise to ensure a smooth transition for our internal and external business partners.”
A great line on Russell’s resume reads, “I am a productive member of any team and willing to go the extra mile to get the job done on time and within budget,” which is justifiable in every respect.
She is currently working closely with her business partners to ensure she understands their needs and to establish a collaborative partnership. Doing this, she says, allows her to source with suppliers for the greatest value at the best cost.
“I am also making sure to spend extra time with each business partner once the agreements are in place with the supplier to help them with the Workday process,” Russell says. “With the implementation of Workday our business partners now have to enter requisitions for services. As this is new to them, I am doing my best to make this transition easy as they familiarize themselves with the new procurement process.”
Lance Sprague, American Financial Group
As a strategic sourcing representative at American Financial Group, Lance Sprague’s role is to drive process efficiencies and help the company leverage its enterprise purchasing power, by aggregating spend throughout the various lines of business.
“One way we achieve this is through strategic sourcing, including our structured competitive bidding processes,” Sprague tells My Purchasing Center. “We work with our lines of business on their strategic projects and initiatives to help them achieve the optimal balance of quality, service, availability, and ultimately value for their third-party expenditures.” Ruben McMillan, Senior Sourcing Manager at American Financial Group, nominated Sprague for the EPIC Rising Star honor.
“As a non-mandated procurement department, we have to provide as much value as possible to our internal customers,” Sprague says. “Whether that’s through cost savings, improved contractual language/business terms, legal protection, or project management, we constantly seek to exceed our customers’ expectations. If our customers don’t see value in the services that we provide, then they don’t have to use our services. This keeps our team hungry to wow our customers and provide the best service possible.”
Congratulations and good luck, all!
Listen to podcast interviews with our 2015 EPIC Rising Star Award finalists
– See more at: http://www.mypurchasingcenter.com/purchasing/blogs/my-purchasing-center-recognizes-2015-epic-rising-star-award-finalists/#sthash.GWztlmY8.dpuf
CONTENT IS KING 