September 22, 2024 • 37 mins
In this episode, Simon sits down with Natasha Gurevich, the former Chief Procurement Officer at Nike and a seasoned expert in procurement leadership. Natasha shares her extensive experience, starting from her unexpected journey into procurement at The Gap, to leading global procurement at renowned companies like McKesson, Salesforce, and PayPal.
Natasha discusses the importance of understanding global factors, building strong supplier relationships, and the strategic role of category management in procurement. She emphasizes the need for procurement professionals to be knowledgeable and adaptable, highlighting how to navigate the complexities of the procurement landscape effectively.
With insights on everything from the impact of geopolitical events on supply chains to the nuances of stakeholder management, Natasha provides a deep dive into what it takes to succeed in procurement today. Whether you're new to the field or an experienced professional, this episode offers valuable perspectives on driving procurement excellence.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
To know your business, you have to read. If you think about 2024,
there will be 68 presidential elections this year.
There are 110 wars in the world.
Like one day we're discussing that we're sending people on Mars,
very advanced, not just technology, but advanced thinking.
Next day we're hearing in the newspapers that there are pirates who attack the particular ships.
(00:23):
So you have to take all these components into consideration.
The world, the country, the state, the company, the needs of that particular department.
Welcome everyone to our next episode of Experts Uncut.
Very pleased to have with me Natasha Grygovich, a prior chief procurement officer
(00:44):
at Nike, or as Nike for our European listeners.
She's also set up and run procurement and led procurement globally at companies
like McKesson, Salesforce, starting out again in tech with firms like PayPal.
So a wealth, real depth and breadth of experience in procurement leadership.
(01:05):
So very excited to have you here today, Natasha. Thank you for joining.
Thank you, Simon, for inviting me. Very excited to have this conversation.
Yeah, it's been a long time in the making. I think the procurement ecosystem
and network is pretty broad.
I've had a lot of people that have mentioned your name over the years, people
that you've work with prior colleagues people that have been lucky to
(01:25):
be in your teams but but i was glad to get to finally meet
you this year and excited to uh to have you
on today so thank you i think what one approach that we like to take at least
with this is to is to really start at the beginning learn a bit more about you
before we go into some of those areas and topics where you've got deep expertise
so i think people just love to learn about you i mean how did you get started in in In procurement,
(01:50):
how did the journey really, really kick off? I think that'd be fun to hear.
Procurement happened to me. I stumbled into it and that was a very fortunate stumble.
So 25 years ago, I moved to the States 27 years ago and 25 years started my
journey in procurement as a temporary buyer at The Gap.
(02:13):
And my first assignment, I was a print buyer checking accuracy of the business cards.
And as you know, everyone take their business cards very personally.
And so it was, as I thought at that time, that it was a very, very important task.
But it was certainly a fascinating job.
Truth be told, I did not know what procurement or printing or corporate world was before that. But.
(02:42):
It was an amazing 25-year journey. I worked in the retail as the Gap and finished at Nike.
My first chapter of my professional career, I worked in tech companies.
You mentioned PayPal and Salesforce.
I worked on the consulting side a little bit with a company called Curion,
(03:03):
which is now part of Accenture.
And on IBM, where I actually was building procurement programs for my clients
and through the clients like Starbucks and Clorox, I met, I got exposure to more organizations.
So, I worked at McKesson, which is a medical supply distributor.
(03:25):
So, I got very fortunate exposure to all sorts of industries,
and they solidified my commitment to procurement and, frankly,
my love for this field, which is not always well understood and appreciated,
but certainly is my passion.
(03:46):
Yeah, I love it. I mean, those are some pretty iconic brands, right?
I mean, from a West Coast perspective, those are the biggest and the brightest
and some of the most successful companies that have come out of the Bay Area
and Northern California.
So that's super, super cool. Cool. I think one thing that I really enjoyed when
we've chatted in the past as well is about.
(04:07):
From your prior experience and moving up the ranks, you've taken some kind of
pretty bold moves on core areas of procurement.
So terms that I noted down in my book last time we chatted with things like
don't RFP everything and concepts like not necessarily setting targets for
(04:30):
cost takeout and cost reduction but but
keeping a very close eye on on operations metrics
and driving the organization in that direction what organization was it that
you were working out you know that you were specifically leading where you started
to make changes right kind of molding your approach into you know natasha's
(04:52):
leadership style versus things that were kind of more commonplace?
To protect the confidentiality of my four employers, I'm not going to name the
company if you don't mind, but I would rather focus on what was shaping me as
a procurement professional and as a leader.
So I would say that the leadership journey kind of started from eBay, right?
(05:17):
So I was hired by eBay at the time when I had acquired PayPal.
And while eBay had a well developed procurement organization.
They needed to build procurement organization for PayPal.
And I started as a one-woman show. And when I left, I left the team of about 10, 12 people.
(05:40):
Providing full spectrum of procurement support, support to PayPal.
And I started my career back in Russia.
And I was a founder and a principal of a vocational school.
So leading people was not new to me. But leading people in the U.S.
(06:02):
Is very different than leading people in Russia.
It's kind of like I was up to a rude awakening that you can't tell people what
to do. in the United States, just
as you had to adapt and adjust your pronunciation of Nike to Nike, right?
The same, the culturally and from communication perspective,
(06:23):
the approach is very different.
And I would say that eBay signifies the beginning of my leadership journey.
As for procurement journey, I started, I always experimented with what works,
what doesn't, especially when I was on consulting side.
And I'm like, we have so many clients.
(06:45):
Do we have to run a contingent labor RFP for every client?
Or can we just take the best practices from there? there.
I often, it's just, I observe through various organizations that procurement
professionals often rely on RFPs to bring together various parties and kind
(07:07):
of like to have this common,
to have this common ground of objectivity and very particular written responses in particular
way, in particular format, and they use it as a sign of objectivity, but,
that's a very time-consuming and expensive way to build this objectivity and
(07:32):
to generate it if procurement professionals would have enough time and bandwidth
on focusing more on category management and learning.
The depth and ins and outs of their specific category of spend that they're responsible for,
then they actually would have a lot of market intel and a lot of very objective
(07:55):
knowledge on what cost of services or goods should be.
And maybe not every single interaction should be supported by RRP.
There are other ways how to know the price point.
And I think hearing solutions directly from suppliers versus asking them to
(08:18):
feed the square pad of their solution into round hole of your RFP template,
it's exhausting process for everyone and doesn't necessarily always generate
the outcome that it's intended.
So I always experimented with that. You mentioned something about the numbers.
(08:40):
There is some focus about spend.
You need to increase spend under management or you need to increase BD&I spend or the savings.
You need to create, generate certain commercial value to the company that you're
working for or number of suppliers.
You have to have X number of suppliers. And I always say that numbers are arbitrary.
(09:05):
Yes, you need to have a general idea where you're marching toward to.
Otherwise, you're going to end up somewhere else if you're not clear where you're going to.
But sometimes marching to the numbers replace doing the right thing for the company.
And I am, at this point, a very convinced subscriber to the philosophy that
(09:26):
if you do the right thing for the company,
whether in number of suppliers or in generated savings or in spend under management
or spend with diverse community and small businesses,
if you do the right things, numbers will follow. It just cannot be otherwise.
Yeah, I love that. I think one thing that resonates with me specifically around
(09:50):
the approach is early on in my career when I was in consulting myself at some
large name brand companies,
we were told to work with clients following this very kind of structured process, right?
It was the seven-step strategic sourcing that was created by A.T.
Carney and then adopted in five steps, six steps, and everyone had their own variation for it.
(10:13):
But there wasn't enough variation and adaptability into that framework for real
life, for practical approaches,
renewals where there wasn't the time to potentially go out to market,
for market dynamics where there weren't enough suppliers to invite,
or situations where the.
(10:37):
You're working with or working for doesn't necessarily have a huge amount of
leverage with a major player, right?
So inviting them to RFP, they may decline, right?
But if you went to them and you build a relationship with them,
you know, built up some rapport and, you know, maybe you would be able to get
some terms and business from them.
Almost the commercial or sales aspect was left out and the practicalities of
(11:00):
not being able to follow that process. So So that makes a lot of sense.
How about another thing that was really intriguing to me that you mentioned?
It plays a little bit to your category management of how important that is a
concept was know your supplier's business just as good and or potentially better,
(11:21):
both their business as well as the product, you know, than they did.
Can you tell us a bit more about that? Did you learn that through trial and
error? Was it something that you're passionate about today for a particular reason?
But what's made you lead with that philosophy in recent years?
(11:42):
Actually, that is probably my longest standing philosophy, listening to suppliers
and relying on their experience and wisdom and broad perspective because they see a lot of clients.
That I developed very, very early on when I was working at the Gap.
And the leadership of procurement at the Gap at that time built very strong
(12:06):
relationships with key providers that were absolutely instrumental for company success.
And being a buyer, I very quickly realized that buyers have a lot of power and.
Enabling the progress or blocking the
(12:28):
progress and when i say buyer i don't mean
just a title i'm a cpo but i'm a
buyer right i'm on the buying side of the business so it's not the title it's
more like a function now people make buying decisions they can make or break
someone's business they make decisions not just on behalf of their own company
but on behalf of all of of the suppliers that they're working with.
(12:53):
And very early on, I realized that the more partnership I build with suppliers,
the more institutional knowledge and the more industry best practices,
I will be able to gather because I am just one company.
They see the spectrum of the businesses that buy similar goods or services that
(13:16):
have maybe the same setup as we do, maybe the same problems as we do.
Whatever their geopolitical or economic changes in the environment,
they affect all companies, not just some selected companies.
So I learned very early on to respect their opinions and see them as a source
(13:38):
of information and a source of very credible market intel.
What I learned later in my professional career, that I also need to understand
not how much I will be paying, because the traditional first question, so how much will it be?
But that's the price.
(14:00):
But what's the cost? And I started working with suppliers trying to understand
what costs them to deliver their services or goods to us.
And once you start understanding what are their cost pressures,
what are their pain points, sometimes it's,
(14:21):
The orders are placed late. Sometimes it's their relationships with the other third parties.
Sometimes it's their ability to take credit from the bank.
So it's a cash flow issue. Sometimes it's the ability of merger and acquisition
in their particular industry.
So there's some consolidating, some spreading across and going in the opposite direction.
(14:44):
But once you understand what costs them money, you can have a much better negotiation
strategy on if you ease their pain, they will be able to significantly improve
their value proposition to you.
So instead of squeezing them on the margin, and I just even hate that when I'm
hearing this phrase from people who've been in the industry for a long time,
(15:08):
they're like squeezing suppliers on the margins. That seems to be someone's favorite activity.
And for me, it's like chocolate on a board, right?
If we understand, if we, the buyers, understand what is important to the seller
and what costs them money, and if we can work within our own organization internally
(15:29):
trying to change our processes,
our approaches, our timeline.
If we can just make it a little bit more supplier-friendly, we will benefit tri-fold from that.
So that's the concept I'm trying to bring into the organizations that I support or lead,
(15:50):
that this combination of double
emphasis on supplier relationships and double emphasis on category management
can take any procurement organization from transactional order taker to strategic
thinking partner who still delivers fast.
(16:10):
But at a very different.
Level of procurement sophistication yeah
i love that i mean really removing removing
all of the unknowns right in that in that
relationship and and caring i think to the extent
of which you you actually want to find the
answer you know for the benefit of the supplier to show them respect but also
(16:35):
so you truly understand whether you're getting a good deal or not i've i've
i've always I've always challenged companies or clients I've worked with in
the past to say that the company that spends the most amount of money doesn't
always get the best terms, right, on aggregate.
I mean, there's no... You talk to any chief revenue officer and ask them for
a summary of terms ranked by customer and customer spend, it's never going to be a direct alignment.
(17:04):
And the reality is the cost of working with that customer, the time at which they signed their deal,
how hard they pushed, the frequency in which they've asked for renegotiations,
the changing cost pressures, and even just delivering to their location.
Something as simple as where the deliveries need to be made to,
the frequency, the turnaround time on orders, how well they pay and they pay on time, etc.
(17:31):
In accordance with the pay terms that might be negotiated, all those things
have real monetary impact.
Absolutely. Yeah. And also, it's kind of like if you're on supply chain,
for example, if you're supporting from sourcing and procurement perspective
supply chain, right, you do need to understand all these differences between
(17:51):
the last mile, truckload, less than truckload.
You have to really be able to figure out the solution together with your transportation
partners and with your transportation stakeholders on what's the best mechanism.
Because also now I have different people.
(18:11):
Ways of delivering things, right? And the same difference, they started existing in every category.
There used to be this phrase that nobody gets fired for hiring IBM.
That's no longer the case, right? Because we started paying attention to small businesses.
Because sometimes small businesses are more agile.
(18:33):
They're more fine-tuned with their consumers directly because they're just interacting
with them on a more frequent basis.
When we were building diversity and inclusion programs, a program for one of my former employers,
we were focusing not just on diverse aspects, but also on small aspects because during COVID,
(18:57):
the small companies adapted to the change environment much faster And they were
able to deliver services that were kind of more pointy,
more targeted specifically to what we needed versus just like brushstrokes that
sometimes larger companies deliver.
So nothing bad about large companies.
So very often you need to use the behemoths of the industries because they have
(19:22):
global presence or they have multiple practices that the company,
broader company, can utilize with a greater return, greater benefit.
Benefit, but knowing the market around you,
knowing who are the players and not just those names that appear in,
you know, like the procurement magazines or on the front pages of some publications,
(19:46):
but those who are maybe smaller and less known, but just is capable or maybe
from the niche perspective,
even generate greater outcome. Yeah.
Yeah, that's great. And I think one thing as well that you'd likely bring to
the table in general is there's a reputation to it as well.
I mean, sales, CROs, account execs for similar companies, right?
(20:10):
Especially ones that operate in the same regions, but also ones that have been
around in those industries for a while, they talk, right?
So when they know that Natasha's calling
or someone one from natasha's team and they've interacted with
you in the past then you know they're likely if anything
it can accelerate the conversation you know
(20:30):
so there's there's a there's a real long-term kind of you know multi-decade
impact that happens in how you conduct yourself and and interact with suppliers
that you know that has a has a price point to it as well which i think's yeah
interesting What about category management?
I mean, we've kind of touched on that a little bit, but it's something that
(20:52):
you've obviously implemented at scale, you know, with multi-billion dollar budgets.
Are you a big believer in the full category management effort for every kind
of key category of spend?
Or are there some that you believe it's, you know, it's absolutely necessary
and others where it's, you know, it's more of a kind of a nice to have?
(21:14):
I am a big believer that the key component.
Like the key factor of successful procurement organization is close relationships
with the stakeholders and who own the business,
who own the budget, and we are supporting their business. Procurement is a supporting function.
(21:35):
One of the ways to get on the same page with the key stakeholders is to speak
the same language, is to,
for them, for the stakeholders to trust procurement to significantly impact
and influence business.
(21:56):
Their business, i.e. suggesting which suppliers or agencies or firms to go with,
suggestion on what are the right KPIs and should be established,
suggesting on if the engagement should be for one year, for three years,
for five years, suggesting if it should be done on a near shore,
(22:19):
offshore, somewhere else.
There are a lot of ways how procurement can impact stakeholders' decision on
who to give the business to.
And in order to earn that seat at the table and to earn that voice that stakeholders
will be listening to, procurement professionals have to have depth of knowledge of the category.
(22:46):
So they need to speak the same language with their stakeholders.
That's one of the reasons why I'm so heavily articulating know your suppliers
is because they have to bring that knowledge of the market to the stakeholders.
And one of the best ways to align with stakeholders is to share with them your
(23:08):
vision of your strategy, how you're going to approach this category,
what's happening in the world.
What's happening in the industry?
What global factors are impacting your decision?
So if you think about it, if you think about 2024, there will be 68 presidential elections this year.
(23:31):
We are currently in 110 military conflicts.
There are 110 wars in the world.
Like one day we're discussing that we're sending people on Mars, right?
So very advanced, not just technology, but advanced thinking about this.
The next day we're hearing in the newspaper is that there are pirates who,
(23:53):
you know, are just operating in the Red Sea and they attack particular ships, right?
So there are a lot of factors that will impact many categories of span, right? Right.
Presidential elections means shift of power. Shift of power goes hand in hand
with financials. So will the big
(24:14):
public companies impacted by certain some companies by certain elections?
Of course. How do you take it into consideration?
How do you tie it to where your goods are coming from or labor availability
to satisfy the growing needs of your company?
Or the company's geographic expansion to different regions or product expansion to different areas.
(24:40):
When you are an experienced category
manager, you have to take all these components into consideration.
That's why you start looking at the world.
The country, the state, the company, the needs of that particular department,
whether they're supporting marketing, organization, supply chain,
(25:01):
or like the construction and development.
So whatever organization procurement support, they need to bring this broader perspective.
When you bring it all together and tie it to business objectives and needs and
aspirations that this particular, let's say, marketing team wants to take forward.
(25:25):
Then they can have very intelligent and fact-based conversation.
Then procurement people earn their right to assist their stakeholders.
It cannot be earned by mandating and issuing the procurement policy that requires
all projects over half a million dollars to go through procurement.
(25:46):
It's a good guideline, but it doesn't necessarily, it's a guideline.
It's not a guardrail, right? So it doesn't mean, I'm yet to meet the company
other than one that operates based on mandate.
Date everything else is based on how
(26:07):
can you help me or really will
you will you assist my progress or
will you impend my progress will you
help me to get to market faster or are
you going to put me through so many circles of bureaucracy that
the project will die before the purchase order
will be issued yeah and two
(26:29):
things i want to kind of dive into there i
think i'll start with the latter one first though but i think both
are important one one is i think it's it's really interesting but the the concept
of persuasion right negotiation is is is sometimes a very small part related
to a contract negotiation that procurement might be doing with the supplier The rest of the time,
(26:53):
it's negotiating with existing suppliers to get something that perhaps isn't
in the contract where you need their help,
and then negotiating with stakeholders and trying to bring the organization
along in whatever goal or project that you're trying to drive if you're in procurement.
Huge amount of persuasion there. On the category management side,
that's interesting. I think...
(27:14):
From what you're saying, the concept is really just that.
The concept is a concept. It's an enabler, but it's ultimately a rite of passage.
By doing category management, by embodying the concept, it enables you to be
better at what you need to do to serve the business.
(27:35):
It allows you to gain the knowledge
and retain the knowledge that you need in
order to have a seat at the table to have the conversation where
you're adding value so if you don't ask
people to follow academy management approach you know
it's likely they're missing certain elements perhaps from the checklist
right maybe they're doing the market research right
(27:57):
which is traditional with academy management it's a
lot of direct goods research understanding the
market but there are just other components right understanding the
stakeholders their actual needs keeping a
close tight track on contracts when they're
coming up for renewal so it's not all last minute really understanding
the data and the spend analytics and that kind of
(28:17):
the payable side i mean it's that whole the category you're managing effectively
every element of the category almost like it's your house and or your baby i
think so that makes a lot of sense well it's kind of like to know your business
you have to read yeah if you read five articles.
Take another two hours and summarize
(28:40):
it in one page and that's market research
right and you do need to know what's happening like in with the supplier composition
and if you've gone through 10 hours of research then take another hour and summarize
and that's your second page you do need to know when contracts expire right
(29:00):
so if you've gone through that analytics.
It's kind of like, I think, all procurement professionals,
including me when I was the manager and I was putting my own category of the strategies.
We're dragging our feet, but it's not because we don't like doing that.
(29:21):
It's because operational, the reality of everyone's existence is that there
are so many operational and everyday activities, and they always take priority.
And my teams often ask me questions.
Do you want me to spend my time keeping the lights on or the lights can dim
(29:43):
or go off completely and you want me to sit and strategize?
And I'm always trying to explain that if you don't sit and strategize,
the lights will go on eventually.
Because if you focus just on operational, you will always be chasing your own tail.
Stock will always be thrown over the fence, unexpectedly landing on your lab
(30:07):
and it's like sign it or execute it or negotiate it.
And if you don't take time to prep, you'll always be chasing.
So it's important to find time to do that.
I think it's a great skill because if anyone from my former teams will listen
to you, they probably will chuckle.
But I believe in this concept of zooming in and zooming out.
(30:30):
And I think procurement professionals are awesome with this skill because we
need to zoom in on the details of the deal and the details of the project to
understand all ins and outs, focus on the details.
And then we're going to have a conversation about how it's going to fit into
the overall company's profile.
(30:52):
And we have to zoom out and we have to look at the whole picture and we have
to be very mindful about every aspect of the business that will be impacted
in some way by that particular project or initiative.
And so we have to be mindful and thoughtful.
(31:12):
Understanding the impact and precise in how we're going to weave it in to the
reality yeah that's great i love that zoom in zoom out i'm going to use that.
And and one final thing to close on that i
didn't i didn't pick up on before but i think would be
interesting is you know parts of your career
(31:32):
you've spent in i would almost say commercial you know
there's a commercial aspect to being on the service
provider side right is that something
that you think has has helped
from stakeholder management from you
know from firefighting perhaps from you know
(31:52):
dealing with other you know other other people's needs you know in order to
to hit certain goals because you mentioned that that's important within within
the procurement as a function and the skill set is that something that you you
just have naturally or that you kind of learned from from being on the services
end as well At this point,
I don't know what came naturally or what I learned.
(32:14):
But I would say that six years of providing services to large organizations
and building procurement organizations and procurement solutions,
presenting different procurement solutions, it taught me a couple of things.
First of all, very quickly switch hats, right?
Because different customers and different geographies and they have very different needs.
(32:40):
And, you know, it's kind of like nobody wants to feel that you are one of the three.
We all want to feel that we are the one, right?
To learn and...
Keep in mind a lot of details and specifics of their
operation of what's what what's important to them and that may not be important
(33:01):
to others you do bring some practices from one place to another but only when
it makes sense cookie cutter approach like i spoke with a lot of my.
With a lot of my peers and one of all we all have one common pet piece and that
is the cookie cutter approach when someone is just like giving us a solution
(33:27):
that may not have to do much with our reality.
So that's one thing that I learned.
Well, switching quickly, right? And the same zoom in, zoom out concept.
Some clients needed tactical participation in like, hey, help me to generate,
I don't know, X million dollars of savings in the next three months, right?
(33:49):
Three Three months do not give you an opportunity to do anything strategic.
So it's a tactical implementation of a cost savings opportunity.
Some asked us to work on full-blown transformation. So we were putting that in practice.
It also helped me to see many different companies and how they operated because
my customers represent, I had government organizations that operated very differently.
(34:14):
I had tech companies, I had retail companies, and different industries,
different mindset, different way of processing information, different level
of technological advancement.
So it all helps to build perspective.
Perspective so i as i
said that from the from the very beginning i'm very
(34:36):
passionate about procurement because i think our field is
populated with amazing thinkers and
amazing problem solvers and one of
the reasons why you can
put procurement person in front of any problem that
they haven't faced before and if they
don't know the answer from knowledge perspective from
(34:58):
previous experience perspective they will certainly
figure it out fairly quickly just because we
are always facing either the
projects or category of spend or the initiative that we may not have dealt with
before all right it doesn't know it doesn't matter how well you know let's see
(35:22):
let's just stick with marketing for a second it doesn't doesn't matter how well
you know for example digital marketing,
but if your company decides to.
Acquire intellectual property on the voice or image of someone famous,
you are stepping into a completely different way of figuring out how to negotiate that.
(35:43):
Or if your company decides that we will be participating as an advertiser in
the next Olympic Games and we haven't ever played a place in Olympic Games,
then again, you're doing a completely different job.
Now that you need to figure out how to help your marketing colleagues to solve
(36:05):
yeah i love it constantly changing at least as practice one thing that i have
i've learned in operating with people and uh you know in the procurement also the supply chain.
Space is they are probably some of the most resourceful people in the commercial
world the most networked the most resourceful they always have a guy or a girl of some you know
(36:29):
in some area across some of the suppliers they've worked with and the categories
they've managed in the past or you know not necessarily just in their organization
so there's a seem to be kind of common traits irrelevant of who you're talking
to well it's been absolute pleasure natasha i really appreciate your time thank
you for coming on very much for inviting me and,
(36:49):
thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my passion yeah of course and
i think anyone who doesn't know Natasha and wants to connect with her on LinkedIn
to at least follow her, if not connect directly, I encourage you to reach out.
But yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thanks again, Natasha. Thank you.
To know your business, you have to read. If you think about 2024,
there will be 68 presidential elections this year.
There are 110 wars in the world.
Like one day we're discussing that we're sending people on Mars,
very advanced, not just technology, but advanced thinking.
Next day we're hearing in the newspapers that there are pirates who attack the particular ships.
(00:23):
So you have to take all these components into consideration.
The world, the country, the state, the company, the needs of that particular department.
Welcome everyone to our next episode of Experts Uncut.
Very pleased to have with me Natasha Grygovich, a prior chief procurement officer
(00:44):
at Nike, or as Nike for our European listeners.
She's also set up and run procurement and led procurement globally at companies
like McKesson, Salesforce, starting out again in tech with firms like PayPal.
So a wealth, real depth and breadth of experience in procurement leadership.
(01:05):
So very excited to have you here today, Natasha. Thank you for joining.
Thank you, Simon, for inviting me. Very excited to have this conversation.
Yeah, it's been a long time in the making. I think the procurement ecosystem
and network is pretty broad.
I've had a lot of people that have mentioned your name over the years, people
that you've work with prior colleagues people that have been lucky to
(01:25):
be in your teams but but i was glad to get to finally meet
you this year and excited to uh to have you
on today so thank you i think what one approach that we like to take at least
with this is to is to really start at the beginning learn a bit more about you
before we go into some of those areas and topics where you've got deep expertise
so i think people just love to learn about you i mean how did you get started in in In procurement,
(01:50):
how did the journey really, really kick off? I think that'd be fun to hear.
Procurement happened to me. I stumbled into it and that was a very fortunate stumble.
So 25 years ago, I moved to the States 27 years ago and 25 years started my
journey in procurement as a temporary buyer at The Gap.
(02:13):
And my first assignment, I was a print buyer checking accuracy of the business cards.
And as you know, everyone take their business cards very personally.
And so it was, as I thought at that time, that it was a very, very important task.
But it was certainly a fascinating job.
Truth be told, I did not know what procurement or printing or corporate world was before that. But.
(02:42):
It was an amazing 25-year journey. I worked in the retail as the Gap and finished at Nike.
My first chapter of my professional career, I worked in tech companies.
You mentioned PayPal and Salesforce.
I worked on the consulting side a little bit with a company called Curion,
(03:03):
which is now part of Accenture.
And on IBM, where I actually was building procurement programs for my clients
and through the clients like Starbucks and Clorox, I met, I got exposure to more organizations.
So, I worked at McKesson, which is a medical supply distributor.
(03:25):
So, I got very fortunate exposure to all sorts of industries,
and they solidified my commitment to procurement and, frankly,
my love for this field, which is not always well understood and appreciated,
but certainly is my passion.
(03:46):
Yeah, I love it. I mean, those are some pretty iconic brands, right?
I mean, from a West Coast perspective, those are the biggest and the brightest
and some of the most successful companies that have come out of the Bay Area
and Northern California.
So that's super, super cool. Cool. I think one thing that I really enjoyed when
we've chatted in the past as well is about.
(04:07):
From your prior experience and moving up the ranks, you've taken some kind of
pretty bold moves on core areas of procurement.
So terms that I noted down in my book last time we chatted with things like
don't RFP everything and concepts like not necessarily setting targets for
(04:30):
cost takeout and cost reduction but but
keeping a very close eye on on operations metrics
and driving the organization in that direction what organization was it that
you were working out you know that you were specifically leading where you started
to make changes right kind of molding your approach into you know natasha's
(04:52):
leadership style versus things that were kind of more commonplace?
To protect the confidentiality of my four employers, I'm not going to name the
company if you don't mind, but I would rather focus on what was shaping me as
a procurement professional and as a leader.
So I would say that the leadership journey kind of started from eBay, right?
(05:17):
So I was hired by eBay at the time when I had acquired PayPal.
And while eBay had a well developed procurement organization.
They needed to build procurement organization for PayPal.
And I started as a one-woman show. And when I left, I left the team of about 10, 12 people.
(05:40):
Providing full spectrum of procurement support, support to PayPal.
And I started my career back in Russia.
And I was a founder and a principal of a vocational school.
So leading people was not new to me. But leading people in the U.S.
(06:02):
Is very different than leading people in Russia.
It's kind of like I was up to a rude awakening that you can't tell people what
to do. in the United States, just
as you had to adapt and adjust your pronunciation of Nike to Nike, right?
The same, the culturally and from communication perspective,
(06:23):
the approach is very different.
And I would say that eBay signifies the beginning of my leadership journey.
As for procurement journey, I started, I always experimented with what works,
what doesn't, especially when I was on consulting side.
And I'm like, we have so many clients.
(06:45):
Do we have to run a contingent labor RFP for every client?
Or can we just take the best practices from there? there.
I often, it's just, I observe through various organizations that procurement
professionals often rely on RFPs to bring together various parties and kind
(07:07):
of like to have this common,
to have this common ground of objectivity and very particular written responses in particular
way, in particular format, and they use it as a sign of objectivity, but,
that's a very time-consuming and expensive way to build this objectivity and
(07:32):
to generate it if procurement professionals would have enough time and bandwidth
on focusing more on category management and learning.
The depth and ins and outs of their specific category of spend that they're responsible for,
then they actually would have a lot of market intel and a lot of very objective
(07:55):
knowledge on what cost of services or goods should be.
And maybe not every single interaction should be supported by RRP.
There are other ways how to know the price point.
And I think hearing solutions directly from suppliers versus asking them to
(08:18):
feed the square pad of their solution into round hole of your RFP template,
it's exhausting process for everyone and doesn't necessarily always generate
the outcome that it's intended.
So I always experimented with that. You mentioned something about the numbers.
(08:40):
There is some focus about spend.
You need to increase spend under management or you need to increase BD&I spend or the savings.
You need to create, generate certain commercial value to the company that you're
working for or number of suppliers.
You have to have X number of suppliers. And I always say that numbers are arbitrary.
(09:05):
Yes, you need to have a general idea where you're marching toward to.
Otherwise, you're going to end up somewhere else if you're not clear where you're going to.
But sometimes marching to the numbers replace doing the right thing for the company.
And I am, at this point, a very convinced subscriber to the philosophy that
(09:26):
if you do the right thing for the company,
whether in number of suppliers or in generated savings or in spend under management
or spend with diverse community and small businesses,
if you do the right things, numbers will follow. It just cannot be otherwise.
Yeah, I love that. I think one thing that resonates with me specifically around
(09:50):
the approach is early on in my career when I was in consulting myself at some
large name brand companies,
we were told to work with clients following this very kind of structured process, right?
It was the seven-step strategic sourcing that was created by A.T.
Carney and then adopted in five steps, six steps, and everyone had their own variation for it.
(10:13):
But there wasn't enough variation and adaptability into that framework for real
life, for practical approaches,
renewals where there wasn't the time to potentially go out to market,
for market dynamics where there weren't enough suppliers to invite,
or situations where the.
(10:37):
You're working with or working for doesn't necessarily have a huge amount of
leverage with a major player, right?
So inviting them to RFP, they may decline, right?
But if you went to them and you build a relationship with them,
you know, built up some rapport and, you know, maybe you would be able to get
some terms and business from them.
Almost the commercial or sales aspect was left out and the practicalities of
(11:00):
not being able to follow that process. So So that makes a lot of sense.
How about another thing that was really intriguing to me that you mentioned?
It plays a little bit to your category management of how important that is a
concept was know your supplier's business just as good and or potentially better,
(11:21):
both their business as well as the product, you know, than they did.
Can you tell us a bit more about that? Did you learn that through trial and
error? Was it something that you're passionate about today for a particular reason?
But what's made you lead with that philosophy in recent years?
(11:42):
Actually, that is probably my longest standing philosophy, listening to suppliers
and relying on their experience and wisdom and broad perspective because they see a lot of clients.
That I developed very, very early on when I was working at the Gap.
And the leadership of procurement at the Gap at that time built very strong
(12:06):
relationships with key providers that were absolutely instrumental for company success.
And being a buyer, I very quickly realized that buyers have a lot of power and.
Enabling the progress or blocking the
(12:28):
progress and when i say buyer i don't mean
just a title i'm a cpo but i'm a
buyer right i'm on the buying side of the business so it's not the title it's
more like a function now people make buying decisions they can make or break
someone's business they make decisions not just on behalf of their own company
but on behalf of all of of the suppliers that they're working with.
(12:53):
And very early on, I realized that the more partnership I build with suppliers,
the more institutional knowledge and the more industry best practices,
I will be able to gather because I am just one company.
They see the spectrum of the businesses that buy similar goods or services that
(13:16):
have maybe the same setup as we do, maybe the same problems as we do.
Whatever their geopolitical or economic changes in the environment,
they affect all companies, not just some selected companies.
So I learned very early on to respect their opinions and see them as a source
(13:38):
of information and a source of very credible market intel.
What I learned later in my professional career, that I also need to understand
not how much I will be paying, because the traditional first question, so how much will it be?
But that's the price.
(14:00):
But what's the cost? And I started working with suppliers trying to understand
what costs them to deliver their services or goods to us.
And once you start understanding what are their cost pressures,
what are their pain points, sometimes it's,
(14:21):
The orders are placed late. Sometimes it's their relationships with the other third parties.
Sometimes it's their ability to take credit from the bank.
So it's a cash flow issue. Sometimes it's the ability of merger and acquisition
in their particular industry.
So there's some consolidating, some spreading across and going in the opposite direction.
(14:44):
But once you understand what costs them money, you can have a much better negotiation
strategy on if you ease their pain, they will be able to significantly improve
their value proposition to you.
So instead of squeezing them on the margin, and I just even hate that when I'm
hearing this phrase from people who've been in the industry for a long time,
(15:08):
they're like squeezing suppliers on the margins. That seems to be someone's favorite activity.
And for me, it's like chocolate on a board, right?
If we understand, if we, the buyers, understand what is important to the seller
and what costs them money, and if we can work within our own organization internally
(15:29):
trying to change our processes,
our approaches, our timeline.
If we can just make it a little bit more supplier-friendly, we will benefit tri-fold from that.
So that's the concept I'm trying to bring into the organizations that I support or lead,
(15:50):
that this combination of double
emphasis on supplier relationships and double emphasis on category management
can take any procurement organization from transactional order taker to strategic
thinking partner who still delivers fast.
(16:10):
But at a very different.
Level of procurement sophistication yeah
i love that i mean really removing removing
all of the unknowns right in that in that
relationship and and caring i think to the extent
of which you you actually want to find the
answer you know for the benefit of the supplier to show them respect but also
(16:35):
so you truly understand whether you're getting a good deal or not i've i've
i've always I've always challenged companies or clients I've worked with in
the past to say that the company that spends the most amount of money doesn't
always get the best terms, right, on aggregate.
I mean, there's no... You talk to any chief revenue officer and ask them for
a summary of terms ranked by customer and customer spend, it's never going to be a direct alignment.
(17:04):
And the reality is the cost of working with that customer, the time at which they signed their deal,
how hard they pushed, the frequency in which they've asked for renegotiations,
the changing cost pressures, and even just delivering to their location.
Something as simple as where the deliveries need to be made to,
the frequency, the turnaround time on orders, how well they pay and they pay on time, etc.
(17:31):
In accordance with the pay terms that might be negotiated, all those things
have real monetary impact.
Absolutely. Yeah. And also, it's kind of like if you're on supply chain,
for example, if you're supporting from sourcing and procurement perspective
supply chain, right, you do need to understand all these differences between
(17:51):
the last mile, truckload, less than truckload.
You have to really be able to figure out the solution together with your transportation
partners and with your transportation stakeholders on what's the best mechanism.
Because also now I have different people.
(18:11):
Ways of delivering things, right? And the same difference, they started existing in every category.
There used to be this phrase that nobody gets fired for hiring IBM.
That's no longer the case, right? Because we started paying attention to small businesses.
Because sometimes small businesses are more agile.
(18:33):
They're more fine-tuned with their consumers directly because they're just interacting
with them on a more frequent basis.
When we were building diversity and inclusion programs, a program for one of my former employers,
we were focusing not just on diverse aspects, but also on small aspects because during COVID,
(18:57):
the small companies adapted to the change environment much faster And they were
able to deliver services that were kind of more pointy,
more targeted specifically to what we needed versus just like brushstrokes that
sometimes larger companies deliver.
So nothing bad about large companies.
So very often you need to use the behemoths of the industries because they have
(19:22):
global presence or they have multiple practices that the company,
broader company, can utilize with a greater return, greater benefit.
Benefit, but knowing the market around you,
knowing who are the players and not just those names that appear in,
you know, like the procurement magazines or on the front pages of some publications,
(19:46):
but those who are maybe smaller and less known, but just is capable or maybe
from the niche perspective,
even generate greater outcome. Yeah.
Yeah, that's great. And I think one thing as well that you'd likely bring to
the table in general is there's a reputation to it as well.
I mean, sales, CROs, account execs for similar companies, right?
(20:10):
Especially ones that operate in the same regions, but also ones that have been
around in those industries for a while, they talk, right?
So when they know that Natasha's calling
or someone one from natasha's team and they've interacted with
you in the past then you know they're likely if anything
it can accelerate the conversation you know
(20:30):
so there's there's a there's a real long-term kind of you know multi-decade
impact that happens in how you conduct yourself and and interact with suppliers
that you know that has a has a price point to it as well which i think's yeah
interesting What about category management?
I mean, we've kind of touched on that a little bit, but it's something that
(20:52):
you've obviously implemented at scale, you know, with multi-billion dollar budgets.
Are you a big believer in the full category management effort for every kind
of key category of spend?
Or are there some that you believe it's, you know, it's absolutely necessary
and others where it's, you know, it's more of a kind of a nice to have?
(21:14):
I am a big believer that the key component.
Like the key factor of successful procurement organization is close relationships
with the stakeholders and who own the business,
who own the budget, and we are supporting their business. Procurement is a supporting function.
(21:35):
One of the ways to get on the same page with the key stakeholders is to speak
the same language, is to,
for them, for the stakeholders to trust procurement to significantly impact
and influence business.
(21:56):
Their business, i.e. suggesting which suppliers or agencies or firms to go with,
suggestion on what are the right KPIs and should be established,
suggesting on if the engagement should be for one year, for three years,
for five years, suggesting if it should be done on a near shore,
(22:19):
offshore, somewhere else.
There are a lot of ways how procurement can impact stakeholders' decision on
who to give the business to.
And in order to earn that seat at the table and to earn that voice that stakeholders
will be listening to, procurement professionals have to have depth of knowledge of the category.
(22:46):
So they need to speak the same language with their stakeholders.
That's one of the reasons why I'm so heavily articulating know your suppliers
is because they have to bring that knowledge of the market to the stakeholders.
And one of the best ways to align with stakeholders is to share with them your
(23:08):
vision of your strategy, how you're going to approach this category,
what's happening in the world.
What's happening in the industry?
What global factors are impacting your decision?
So if you think about it, if you think about 2024, there will be 68 presidential elections this year.
(23:31):
We are currently in 110 military conflicts.
There are 110 wars in the world.
Like one day we're discussing that we're sending people on Mars, right?
So very advanced, not just technology, but advanced thinking about this.
The next day we're hearing in the newspaper is that there are pirates who,
(23:53):
you know, are just operating in the Red Sea and they attack particular ships, right?
So there are a lot of factors that will impact many categories of span, right? Right.
Presidential elections means shift of power. Shift of power goes hand in hand
with financials. So will the big
(24:14):
public companies impacted by certain some companies by certain elections?
Of course. How do you take it into consideration?
How do you tie it to where your goods are coming from or labor availability
to satisfy the growing needs of your company?
Or the company's geographic expansion to different regions or product expansion to different areas.
(24:40):
When you are an experienced category
manager, you have to take all these components into consideration.
That's why you start looking at the world.
The country, the state, the company, the needs of that particular department,
whether they're supporting marketing, organization, supply chain,
(25:01):
or like the construction and development.
So whatever organization procurement support, they need to bring this broader perspective.
When you bring it all together and tie it to business objectives and needs and
aspirations that this particular, let's say, marketing team wants to take forward.
(25:25):
Then they can have very intelligent and fact-based conversation.
Then procurement people earn their right to assist their stakeholders.
It cannot be earned by mandating and issuing the procurement policy that requires
all projects over half a million dollars to go through procurement.
(25:46):
It's a good guideline, but it doesn't necessarily, it's a guideline.
It's not a guardrail, right? So it doesn't mean, I'm yet to meet the company
other than one that operates based on mandate.
Date everything else is based on how
(26:07):
can you help me or really will
you will you assist my progress or
will you impend my progress will you
help me to get to market faster or are
you going to put me through so many circles of bureaucracy that
the project will die before the purchase order
will be issued yeah and two
(26:29):
things i want to kind of dive into there i
think i'll start with the latter one first though but i think both
are important one one is i think it's it's really interesting but the the concept
of persuasion right negotiation is is is sometimes a very small part related
to a contract negotiation that procurement might be doing with the supplier The rest of the time,
(26:53):
it's negotiating with existing suppliers to get something that perhaps isn't
in the contract where you need their help,
and then negotiating with stakeholders and trying to bring the organization
along in whatever goal or project that you're trying to drive if you're in procurement.
Huge amount of persuasion there. On the category management side,
that's interesting. I think...
(27:14):
From what you're saying, the concept is really just that.
The concept is a concept. It's an enabler, but it's ultimately a rite of passage.
By doing category management, by embodying the concept, it enables you to be
better at what you need to do to serve the business.
(27:35):
It allows you to gain the knowledge
and retain the knowledge that you need in
order to have a seat at the table to have the conversation where
you're adding value so if you don't ask
people to follow academy management approach you know
it's likely they're missing certain elements perhaps from the checklist
right maybe they're doing the market research right
(27:57):
which is traditional with academy management it's a
lot of direct goods research understanding the
market but there are just other components right understanding the
stakeholders their actual needs keeping a
close tight track on contracts when they're
coming up for renewal so it's not all last minute really understanding
the data and the spend analytics and that kind of
(28:17):
the payable side i mean it's that whole the category you're managing effectively
every element of the category almost like it's your house and or your baby i
think so that makes a lot of sense well it's kind of like to know your business
you have to read yeah if you read five articles.
Take another two hours and summarize
(28:40):
it in one page and that's market research
right and you do need to know what's happening like in with the supplier composition
and if you've gone through 10 hours of research then take another hour and summarize
and that's your second page you do need to know when contracts expire right
(29:00):
so if you've gone through that analytics.
It's kind of like, I think, all procurement professionals,
including me when I was the manager and I was putting my own category of the strategies.
We're dragging our feet, but it's not because we don't like doing that.
(29:21):
It's because operational, the reality of everyone's existence is that there
are so many operational and everyday activities, and they always take priority.
And my teams often ask me questions.
Do you want me to spend my time keeping the lights on or the lights can dim
(29:43):
or go off completely and you want me to sit and strategize?
And I'm always trying to explain that if you don't sit and strategize,
the lights will go on eventually.
Because if you focus just on operational, you will always be chasing your own tail.
Stock will always be thrown over the fence, unexpectedly landing on your lab
(30:07):
and it's like sign it or execute it or negotiate it.
And if you don't take time to prep, you'll always be chasing.
So it's important to find time to do that.
I think it's a great skill because if anyone from my former teams will listen
to you, they probably will chuckle.
But I believe in this concept of zooming in and zooming out.
(30:30):
And I think procurement professionals are awesome with this skill because we
need to zoom in on the details of the deal and the details of the project to
understand all ins and outs, focus on the details.
And then we're going to have a conversation about how it's going to fit into
the overall company's profile.
(30:52):
And we have to zoom out and we have to look at the whole picture and we have
to be very mindful about every aspect of the business that will be impacted
in some way by that particular project or initiative.
And so we have to be mindful and thoughtful.
(31:12):
Understanding the impact and precise in how we're going to weave it in to the
reality yeah that's great i love that zoom in zoom out i'm going to use that.
And and one final thing to close on that i
didn't i didn't pick up on before but i think would be
interesting is you know parts of your career
(31:32):
you've spent in i would almost say commercial you know
there's a commercial aspect to being on the service
provider side right is that something
that you think has has helped
from stakeholder management from you
know from firefighting perhaps from you know
(31:52):
dealing with other you know other other people's needs you know in order to
to hit certain goals because you mentioned that that's important within within
the procurement as a function and the skill set is that something that you you
just have naturally or that you kind of learned from from being on the services
end as well At this point,
I don't know what came naturally or what I learned.
(32:14):
But I would say that six years of providing services to large organizations
and building procurement organizations and procurement solutions,
presenting different procurement solutions, it taught me a couple of things.
First of all, very quickly switch hats, right?
Because different customers and different geographies and they have very different needs.
(32:40):
And, you know, it's kind of like nobody wants to feel that you are one of the three.
We all want to feel that we are the one, right?
To learn and...
Keep in mind a lot of details and specifics of their
operation of what's what what's important to them and that may not be important
(33:01):
to others you do bring some practices from one place to another but only when
it makes sense cookie cutter approach like i spoke with a lot of my.
With a lot of my peers and one of all we all have one common pet piece and that
is the cookie cutter approach when someone is just like giving us a solution
(33:27):
that may not have to do much with our reality.
So that's one thing that I learned.
Well, switching quickly, right? And the same zoom in, zoom out concept.
Some clients needed tactical participation in like, hey, help me to generate,
I don't know, X million dollars of savings in the next three months, right?
(33:49):
Three Three months do not give you an opportunity to do anything strategic.
So it's a tactical implementation of a cost savings opportunity.
Some asked us to work on full-blown transformation. So we were putting that in practice.
It also helped me to see many different companies and how they operated because
my customers represent, I had government organizations that operated very differently.
(34:14):
I had tech companies, I had retail companies, and different industries,
different mindset, different way of processing information, different level
of technological advancement.
So it all helps to build perspective.
Perspective so i as i
said that from the from the very beginning i'm very
(34:36):
passionate about procurement because i think our field is
populated with amazing thinkers and
amazing problem solvers and one of
the reasons why you can
put procurement person in front of any problem that
they haven't faced before and if they
don't know the answer from knowledge perspective from
(34:58):
previous experience perspective they will certainly
figure it out fairly quickly just because we
are always facing either the
projects or category of spend or the initiative that we may not have dealt with
before all right it doesn't know it doesn't matter how well you know let's see
(35:22):
let's just stick with marketing for a second it doesn't doesn't matter how well
you know for example digital marketing,
but if your company decides to.
Acquire intellectual property on the voice or image of someone famous,
you are stepping into a completely different way of figuring out how to negotiate that.
(35:43):
Or if your company decides that we will be participating as an advertiser in
the next Olympic Games and we haven't ever played a place in Olympic Games,
then again, you're doing a completely different job.
Now that you need to figure out how to help your marketing colleagues to solve
(36:05):
yeah i love it constantly changing at least as practice one thing that i have
i've learned in operating with people and uh you know in the procurement also the supply chain.
Space is they are probably some of the most resourceful people in the commercial
world the most networked the most resourceful they always have a guy or a girl of some you know
(36:29):
in some area across some of the suppliers they've worked with and the categories
they've managed in the past or you know not necessarily just in their organization
so there's a seem to be kind of common traits irrelevant of who you're talking
to well it's been absolute pleasure natasha i really appreciate your time thank
you for coming on very much for inviting me and,
(36:49):
thank you for giving me an opportunity to share my passion yeah of course and
i think anyone who doesn't know Natasha and wants to connect with her on LinkedIn
to at least follow her, if not connect directly, I encourage you to reach out.
But yeah, I really appreciate your time. Thanks again, Natasha. Thank you.
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