With over two decades of experience, Supratim Roy has established himself as a distinguished leader in global sourcing and procurement, specializing in indirect categories with a deep focus on marketing sourcing. His expertise spans multi-region and multi-client environments, managing high-performing buyer teams across India, Asia-Pacific (AP), and EMEA.
Supratim’s strategic approach to procurement has enabled businesses across diverse industries—including IT, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, travel, and consulting—to optimize supplier relationships, drive cost efficiencies, and enhance procurement effectiveness. His global negotiation experience covers key markets such as the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, India, Hong Kong, and Asia, making him a seasoned professional in cross-border procurement dynamics.
In this exclusive feature, we explore Supratim’s insights on navigating complex supply chains, optimizing marketing procurement, and the evolving role of procurement leaders in a rapidly changing global economy.
What do you love about Procurement?
Many things actually, for starting I love the fact that procurement is like the provider for the company – Most of us consider suppliers to be the provider but procurement is the department which goes to the market and gets the product/ services. So the responsibility is immense, and impact is huge. Procurement works and impacts the Profit and Loss for the company.
Procurement is also about coordination with many suppliers and departments, and it is also about project management and ownership – Procurement is the shortcut to learning leadership and business acumen.
How did you get into Procurement? Was your perception of procurement different to the reality?
I got into Procurement when I didn’t have much choice for a job, I am always thankful to the company who gave me the job at that time. I continued with Procurement which was more of a choice and initially my perception when I joined Procurement was that it is about purchasing or buying and that is not totally correct, Procurement is much more strategic in nature than what I thought it to be.
How has procurement and the expectations placed upon it changed over time?
When I started in late 2000s procurement was starting to become more independent as a department, companies were centralising procurement and e-procurement was a new thing. Ariba was gaining popularity and digital signature was a cool new tool for procurement team.
Things have improved a lot, and procurement today is seen more as a strategic function rather than a transactional process. Major credits for this change in mindset should go to the procurement professionals from that time who delivered results and increased the credibility of procurement. We can argue that there is still a lot of improvement areas left but still the progress made is significant and worthwhile to mention.
How do you feel procurement is perceived in general? Why is this?
There are many ways how procurement is perceived all these perceptions have their origin how procurement started – Here is how I categorise these perceptions
1st Procurement is seen as compliance checkpoint like a gatekeeper because procurement started as a compliance checkpoint to stop unmanaged spends
2nd Procurement is seen as a transactional process department majorly for Req to PO process – Again the origin is from compliance
3rd Procurement is seen as a strategic function which can deliver great values to the company like risk mitigation, savings, ESG results, innovations, just in time inventory, better quality and assurance from suppliers
Depending on the maturity of procurement process in the organisation these perceptions can be seen in most companies.
What can procurement do better?
First general points listen more to your stakeholders and collaborate more with the suppliers.
Procurement has to learn to sell the values it brings to the company.
Procurement has to learn to celebrate the wins when it closes a good deal with the suppliers or any other values that we bring. Procurement has to improve its visibility and its image of transactional gatekeeper and start projecting itself as a strategic partner.
Procurements perception as an administrative support role, together with lack of defined career path, and often a lack of visibility educationally compared to roles such as sales, marketing, finance etc, attracting a new generation of professionals is a challenge. What should procurement do about this?
It is true that procurement needs to attract and retain talents. Procurement is a strategic function with a lot of potential in becoming a career choice, It should become a career choice rather than people landing in procurement and then liking it like I did.
The way to do this is to making procurement look cool, increase visibility, getting budget for training, paying the resources well (better than what it is currently), making it stress free, keep it logical and have fun. If you are happy that is the best way to promote your profession.
Simple logic if sales is a popular career, then whom are the sales professionals selling it to, it has to be buyers and procurement teams correct, so procurement should be a popular career too.
What have been the biggest changes to procurement during your career?
When I started e-procurement and ERPs were just getting into the procurement process it made our work much easier, procurement teams started getting time to do other things, most times these ‘other works’ were strategic in nature and procurement became more organised. Centralised procurement became easier to implement and spend visibility increased this lead to spend analysis and better category management.
Next sourcing steps like RPX process became more digital, Reverse Auction was in trend for some time during that time every one wanted to do Reverse Auctions. Today in most businesses the buyer only has to monitor an RPF event and everything else is likely automated. Dashboards are getting better showing better spend analysis. Next, we are getting ready for AI, I keep listening to ideas from suppliers related to AI and some are brilliant, looking forward to what’s coming next in procurement.