Art of Procurement22 Sep 2025

833: The Polycrisis Playbook: How Procurement Can Lead Through Turbulence W/ Gordon Donovan

"We're in the business of change – selling change and then delivering it." - Gordon Donovan, Vice President Research - Procurement & External Workforce, SAP

In an era of overlapping crises, procurement faces fast-evolving challenges… and opportunities.

Senior leaders are tasked with not only keeping the engine running but also building resilient, future-facing teams that thrive in complexity. The recently published SAP Economist Impact research report, "The Resilient Edge: Procurement in an Era of Polycrisis," provides a data-driven lens on what the next three to five years may hold, especially as outsourcing, skills, and technology reshape operating models.

To dig into this new research, Philip Ideson welcomes Gordon Donovan, Vice President Research - Procurement & External Workforce at SAP, back to the show. Gordon combs through insights on what is driving procurement decision-making, current confidence in category management, and the practical implications of surging contingent workforce and outsourcing activity.

Whether you want to understand why risk management is lagging, how AI will drive operating model transformation, or where procurement should focus next, Gordon brings both the latest data and his own hard-won advice for CPOs.

In this episode, Gordon discusses how this latest research from SAP can help procurement:

Identify how leaders' priorities are aligning for the first time in four years
Rethink the value proposition beyond cost savings and communicate it upstream
Advance risk management beyond basic compliance, especially in category strategies
Harness outsourcing and the contingent workforce as proactive transformation levers
Prioritize the right skills, even those that rarely make the official list

Links

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(924)

EP 014: Provider of the Week: Sievo W/ Sammeli Sammalkorpi

"The expectation level of procurement is rising. Today's stuff that was not possible a year ago, that felt like science fiction three years ago, is something that we can create for our customers today...

26 Aug 24min

880: The State of AI in Procurement: Who's Getting the ROI? W/ Nick Heinzmann

"There's an absolute risk of procurement's role and scope being diminished by AI, unless we embrace new ways of working." - Nick Heinzmann, Head of Research, Zip According to new research from Zip, on...

24 Aug 33min

879: The AI Pilot Phase is Over: How to Move From AI Investment to Genuine Business Impact W/ Joseph Postiglione, Sr.

"If you're not completely sure about what you want to try to achieve, how will you know you ever achieved it?" - Joseph Postiglione, Sr., Author, Protecting Expected Outcomes in the Age of AI AI inves...

17 Aug 28min

EP 13: Making Sense of the Procuretech Landscape: Practical Insights for CPOs W/ Samir Khushalani

"The biggest risk today is not making the wrong AI decision. It is making no decision at all while everyone else is learning." Samir Khushalani, Senior Advisor, Art of Procurement Procurement leaders ...

12 Aug 29min

878: Building Procurement as a Strategic Growth Engine W/ Travis Hodge

"Procurement's future is bright, when we continue to do it the right way for the right reasons." - Travis Hodge, Director of Enterprise Sourcing & Procurement at nVent Procurement is no longer just a ...

10 Aug 36min

877: Building Trust for Digital Supply Chain Success W/ Mohit Ahuja

"Visibility is not the end goal. The end goal is how does that visibility enable me to make a quick decision." - Mohit Ahuja, Strategy & Transformation Leader, Caterpillar Business leaders can no long...

3 Aug 28min

EP 12: Provider of the Week: Una

"It's amazing how you can rise to the top just by doing what you say you're going to do and being honest about what you can't do." - Anthony Clervi, Managing Partner, Una Procurement teams today are u...

29 Jul 33min

876: AI with Purpose: Designing Procurement's Next Chapter W/ Gaël De Martelaere

"If you build AI on top of weak foundations, you're going to have a very broken system." - Gaël De Martelaere, Chief Procurement Officer, Hexion AI is driving enormous change in procurement, but succe...

27 Jul 41min