Dave Quillin is the director of strategic sourcing and partner management at Alliant Credit Union in Chicago IL. With over 20 years’ experience and as a proven indirect sourcing leader Dave answers some quick fire procurement questions.
Dave what do you love about Procurement?
At its core, Procurement and Strategic Sourcing is about building relationships and helping people. We are building relationships with our internal stakeholders with the goal of helping them implement their business strategies. We are building relationships with our supplier partners and helping them be competitive in the marketplace. Finally, we help our businesses save money which helps our businesses to stay competitive and can even provide a competitive advantage.
How did you get into Procurement? Was your perception of procurement different to the reality?
I didn’t seek out procurement, procurement found me. I was presented with an opportunity to leave a sales role that I was pretty good at and move into a procurement role. After contemplating it, I realized that in procurement, I would use the same skill set that I was using in sales. In addition, I had an advantage because I had spent 5 years in technology sales at that point and new a lot about how that system worked.
Mostly my perception of procurement has lined up with the reality but the one thing that was different was the amount of contract reading that is required in procurement. While we are not lawyers, I can say to anyone that is coming into the field, you will get quite the education in contract law.
How has procurement and the expectations placed upon it changed over time?
When I first got into procurement, 15 years ago, there was a lot of emphasis on savings and folks were just starting to see the value in centralising the function. It was much more purchasing and procurement than strategic sourcing. Fast forward to today, I think we are expected to be much more strategic and to provide market insights in order to help empower our internal business partners to make good business decisions. Savings is still an expectation but one that comes as a result of being a great business partner and providing strategic value to an organization.
How do you feel procurement is perceived in general? Why is this?
Overall, I think that procurement is viewed much more positively now post the COVID-19 pandemic than we were before. Through that time, we were able prove that we could deliver a ton of value in a short amount of time. I have seen new procurement leadership roles develop over the last few years and that to me tells me that we are being viewed in a much better light. It is now up to us to deliver results!
What should procurement do better?
Build relationships and understand the marketplace. We are great at getting savings but we have a tremendous opportunity to build better relationships internally and externally. When we build appropriate business relationships with all of our business partners then we set ourselves to provide the business unit what they need when they need it; the supplier with a sale which helps them out; and procurement with savings which helps everyone out then we will be seen as truly strategic business advisors and that is our opportunity!