In this insightful webinar on Procurement in the Age of Disruption: Navigating the Future of Negotiation. Our guest speaker, Philip Ideson from Art of Procurement, will join hosts Clive R Heal and Bill Michels, two renowned industry experts, to share their insights on the future of negotiation training & development in the Procurement space.

Negotiation is a core Procurement competency, where personal development requires ongoing practice. What are the new disruptive digital technologies now available, that will raise Procurement skills to a new level and enable increased value delivery?

During this webinar, our experts will explore the key trends and challenges facing Procurement professionals today and provide practical insights into navigating the future of negotiation.

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from industry experts and gain valuable insights into the future of Procurement and negotiation. Register now to secure your spot in this must-attend webinar!

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Clive R Heal: Okay, Good afternoon, everyone. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you are. My name is Clive Hill. I’m. The CEO of Lebanon AI. Delighted to welcome everyone to join our Webinar today. This is the first Webinar in our series. Procurement in the Age of disruption. Today we’re going to be talking about various things, including

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Clive R Heal: navigating the future of negotiation. Delighted to introduce a couple of people in just a second, just to tell you a little bit about myself. I also mentioned CEO of

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Clive R Heal: my background is primarily in procurement. I work for racket and call one racket record Ben Kaiser for for pricewaterhouse Cooper as a Pwc. As a procurement consultant. I work for black, so Smith Klein

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Clive R Heal: that it up procurement for your for

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Clive R Heal: I then work for prudential an Insurance Company Financial Services Company in the Uk. Top 20 Uk Company, and then work for Genentech and Roche, and for the last 7 years at Roche I led the procurement Innovation center that I designed, built, and led in San Francisco.

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Clive R Heal: And then for the last 4 years I’ve been doing my own thing at side of procurement, but still very much in the procurement space and in the procurement innovation space, and i’m delighted to welcome both my partner, Bill Michael and our guest today, Phil Edison. So let me just hand over to Bill to introduce himself.

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Bill Michels: Sure, thanks, Clive. I’m Bill, Michael and I’ve been in procurement quite a while. We had some procurement jobs in corporate life in the Scm. Corporation and Boise Cascade Dirty Foods, Campbell Soup.

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Bill Michels: and and I’ve been a consulting company for 20 years did a lot of training and development sold the company To one of the associations ran the consulting Trade training part of that business. And now i’m with Lebanese AI as a chief growth and revenue officer

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Philip Ideson: myself. Yeah. So i’m for the python. I one. I want to thank you for the invite. I’m delighted, and an honor to share the stage with you. I even Bill today. So I’ve been in procurement 23 years, and that number continues to go up every year. It seems

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really as a practitioner on the direct material side than the indirect procurement

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Philip Ideson: I’ve touched. You know I I to be the Uber journalist. That was my career kind of aspiration. So I touched you

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Philip Ideson: pretty much everything there is to touch in procurement, whether it’s risk because category management with it sourcing variety, different industries and companies spent a long while about a year living in India to running a shared service center, and then went on to the provider side. So it was delivering procurement transformations.

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Philip Ideson: procurement outsourcing programs, and about 8 years ago. Now this is the longest job that I’ve had for sure. I set up out of procurement, which is a you know, a podcast, a media business, a consulting business. We do a lot of things

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Philip Ideson: all really around helping to elevate the impact of procurement and then inspiring, procure professionals to really have confidence in driving change. So it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here today.

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Clive R Heal: hey? Thanks, Phil. So I just got to quickly mentioned. So Bill was in a podcast last week, where he was called the godfather of procurement.

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Clive R Heal: and Phil is the 1 million dollar download man. So he’s comes with a reputation well earned, of course, in terms of your content on the what You’ve done so. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Phil, for for joining. So this Webinar Webinar series

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Clive R Heal: is really for us to share, and with some of our learnings, but also invite guests to share their learnings, their knowledge, their experience, and get into a dialogue about what’s happening in procurement, particularly in this age of disruption. The technology asteroids landed procurement is changing

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Clive R Heal: rapidly right now, and it’s an exciting time to be in procurement is probably the most exciting time ever to be in procurement, and I just worked out between us. We’ve been 85 years, I think it is in procurement, which is a long time. Time. So okay, so so we started this Webinar series. We want to bring in different

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Clive R Heal: topics every month. I do invite you to put questions in the Q. A. Section on the side, and we’ll be picking up on those later. But today we’re going to focus on disruption as a whole in procurement, and then look at negotiation and what’s happening on the negotiation front. So i’m going to head over to

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Clive R Heal: to fill now to give us his thoughts in terms of procurement. And what’s happening right now.

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Philip Ideson: Yeah, thank you, Clive, and it’s obviously it’s a really interesting time for procurement. I think that you know, when we look at the pandemic, and you know, beyond the pandemic this last what 3 or 4 years procurement really has been in the heart of the major challenges that most organizations have had, you know, that comes around. Both

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Philip Ideson: cost inflation. Mitigating, managing cost increases. Obviously one of our car confidences and also around risk, you know, making sure that there are products that can go on the shelves. You know that the that are supply chains

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Philip Ideson: can operate as functionally as they possibly can, and that’s been. That’s a that’s been great. You like the opportunity for procurement, you

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Philip Ideson: to to have that profile in the business, I think, is something that we, as professionals and practitioners have of wanted for a long time

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Philip Ideson: with the opportunity With that being a really good time for procurement. It’s also a can be a pretty dangerous time. And the reason I say that is because.

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Philip Ideson: you know, we we have this perception within a lot of businesses about being. You know the the cost cutters the the people that can come in and do one thing, do it really? Well, we can be on. Call the swat team to drive down cost and to secure savings when a business is in that point of its business cycle.

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Philip Ideson: and then when it’s not, and it goes back to growth and innovation. Then procurement is put on the side and not really thought about until next time. So for what i’m, seeing, you know, for a lot of procurement teams right now is a focus on Yes.

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Philip Ideson: savings and risk management is very important. You know that’s kind of bread and butter, but what’s truly important as well is demonstrated an expanded value proposition like, how do we demonstrate

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Philip Ideson: to the business that we’re here to do those things you need in this moment, right now. But that’s not all we do. And now, with that, we have that platform to demonstrate the role that we can play, and and those value levels can differ based on on on everybody’s organization, is all about being truly aligned with

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Philip Ideson: that needs the business and understanding where you can play a role. So i’m seeing that that’s been a bit of a shift and an opportunity for those who are grabbing it is

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Philip Ideson: to really get valued, you know, to take a look at it as a balance scorecard of how you can create value. So it’s not all. Just about savings and around assurance of supply.

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Philip Ideson: One of the

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Philip Ideson: risks that I not necessarily a risk, but something I observe regularly. And actually I had a conversation with a Cpo just last week about this is, while there may be an acceptance or not, an exceptions, an understanding of the value that procurement can play

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Philip Ideson: procurement teams that are

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Philip Ideson: still focused on the bottom line, and not trying to find a way to align what they do with top line, still struggle to get the investment that they need to grow the profession, and so I think that’s a big opportunity for us. And again, one that I see some of those

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Philip Ideson: organizations that are being blessed with a lot of investment from a procurement perspective

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Philip Ideson: is a real focus, not just on the bottom line. But how come what we do in procurement actually impact revenue impact business growth. You know it could be. There’s one chief strategy officer I talked to fairly recently who said.

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Philip Ideson: You know the procurement team can be the scouts for me for merger and acquisition. You know the supply base, as you know, opportunities out there that’s the scouting rule that procurement can play. That’s nothing to do with saving money. But that’s something that we don’t have the ability to do at scale within our business.

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even though we’re a a company that is working to acquire other organizations, and you can be our eyes in our ears.

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Philip Ideson: So it’s definitely points of value

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Philip Ideson: that I see that you know some of those procurement teams are really driving forward. So I do see that as a somewhere that procurement can play a role.

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Philip Ideson: Now, when you think about disruption.

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Philip Ideson: and that’s really what the Webinar today is around. I think we would all

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Philip Ideson: admit. The procurement changes slowly.

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Philip Ideson: and this reasons we may all have different reasons or different opinions on Why, that happens, you know, maybe, that we’re risk averse. Maybe we feel like we don’t have the backing of the business to change. I think it’s very true that

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Philip Ideson: we touch so many different elements of our business, and the technology that we use is integrated into so many different elements of a business that it just does take longer to get all the different constituents aligned in a way that we’re able to drive change. So I don’t think it’s all on, you know. Procurement just being risk of us. I think there’s some some very valid reasons

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Philip Ideson: why we do sometimes change a little bit slower than other professions. But as we see every day.

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Philip Ideson: you know, the biggest change and disruption for procurement right now is the explosion in technology.

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Philip Ideson: I think about. Even when I started out of procurement, which was 8 years ago when we started really featuring, i’m working with technology firms.

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Philip Ideson: There was maybe 2030 technology firms out there. You know some best of breed a lot of companies who were kind of in the race to build suites there wasn’t a ton of choice out there and fast forward. Now, when you look at all these the logo charts.

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Philip Ideson: there are hundreds and hundreds of of procurement technology firms that have emerged over the last

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Philip Ideson: 3 or 4 years. You know some of those firms are looking to do things that are already done today, but with a different user experience. So they’re trying to just go to the next iteration of a technology that exists.

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Philip Ideson: Some are trying to do something completely different. You know what didn’t exist today that technology allows you to do tomorrow. So it’s not just about

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Philip Ideson: how do we make procurement faster and more efficient. because ultimately

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Philip Ideson: that’s not necessarily going to be a that. That’s the short term competitive advantage, but not necessarily a long term, competitive advantage. It’s. How can we use technology to rethink what it is that we’re doing, and the way we go about doing our business. Those are the ones that are, I think, really really interesting.

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Philip Ideson: and

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Philip Ideson: you can fear that as a professional, or you can really embrace it. And I think that’s kind of the crossroads right now, for perhaps even a lot of people who are watching the Webinar is okay. What do I do? There’s a lot of unknown. There’s never been so much unknown, I think, both from

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Philip Ideson: the businesses we work with, but also the technologies that we’re going to enable is what to do, and even what my job is gonna look like in 3 years time. So it’s. It’s understandable to fear that in some way, but really understanding the after the possible, is something that

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Philip Ideson: I think we see the professionals who are taking that approach to really experimenting and starting to think of different use cases for all these technologies that they hadn’t even thought about before. And that’s really exciting for me, and and exciting for what that means for the future of procurement, you know. And one of those examples

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Philip Ideson: and and part of me thought like, let’s not be cliche and and talk about Chat Gpt. Because i’m sure every single webinar that talks about disruption right now brings that up. But you think about that.

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Philip Ideson: The AI around chat, gpt and and generative. AI,

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Philip Ideson: and think about how can that? You? You know you’re just using prompts to go and search databases, search information, such things that may be really hard to uncover. And in one prompt you’re actually getting insights about a supplier or as a pie market, or even a strategy or things that have changed.

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Philip Ideson: You’re getting that in one prompt which is almost giving you a a mini strategy in, you know, in 10 s, versus the

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Philip Ideson: 10 min or half an hour or days or weeks, that it may take right now to actually try and uncover and understand some of those trends. So

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Philip Ideson: that’s super exciting for me as well.

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Philip Ideson: Now, the other thing that I just wanted to touch on in terms of what I see for procurement is because of all this change.

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Philip Ideson: It really just continue to change the skills that are needed within the procurement space.

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Philip Ideson: I think we’ve talked a lot about soft skills over the years we definitely have on the podcast, so I don’t think that’s anything new, but it’s more than just the soft skills it’s how do we think about what the role of a procurement person is.

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Philip Ideson: you know, is the rule of a procurement person to write an Rfp. Or is it to be a catalyst to change, to help bring information, bring insights to the business that actually has the business stakeholders? Look at things in a different way than they do today. So we need catalysts. We need what we call architects, you know. We we need people that understand that there’s

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Philip Ideson: all these different technologies that you have access to, or information that you can have access to. But how do I actually piece all this together in a way that’s valuable and useful. And there’s because of so much complexity. I think that’s going to be a really important role.

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Philip Ideson: because I think right now, as i’m, you know, as I observe, there’s a lot of people just feel a little bit overwhelmed with all the different things and the different options and opportunities out there, that that ability to architect, in a way that all makes sense is going to be critical.

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and also just along along holding

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Philip Ideson: kind of thought that I’ve had, and I think that when you work in a on the provider side and come back into the practitioner side, one of the things that providers do. A great job on is around relationship management, around program management about the delivery of services.

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Philip Ideson: you know. And this procurement continues to

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Philip Ideson: become, you know, service based organization within a business, then that ability to be a journalist and understand all the things that your stakeholder buys, but know how to then connect the the right dots to damage, to to provide services that help a stakeholder get what they need

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Philip Ideson: is really important. So what a new one says a lot of relational skills, and not necessarily very specific category insight, because category insight is becoming something that more and more you can buy on the inside. Sorry by on the outside, the rely on on the inside. So those are just a few thoughts

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Philip Ideson: they have on on disruption, on opportunities, on risks, on challenges I love, for you know anybody else’s perspective questions on that push back on any of it. But that’s certainly some of the things that i’m seeing a lot of the Cpos and all the procurement execs that I talk to really think about right now.

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Bill Michels: Great thanks, Phil and I. I’m going to pick up on your point on training development, because that’s an area. I’ve spent a a good part of my life in, and i’m going to cover really 3 topics which are, how do you build an effective program? And what are what are the ways that learning is changed? And then what are the trends that we’re seeing.

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Bill Michels: So when when when you think about training development program, I think you want to think about, how does it align with your business? What are your business needs, and and a lot of people just want to sheep dip people or get people through a a program, and and that there doesn’t really help you. So when you look at the needs now that we have, there’s a need to integrate the supply chain, there’s a need for supplier relationship. There’s a need, for, you know, risk management, with all the geopolitical stuff getting flexibility, agility, and and

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Bill Michels: and resilience into the supply chain. So I think one of the things that you have to address in your cost and value. Improvement. Of course, some of the things you have to address is what what is the business needs that you have at the moment. And then what’s the skill set you have? And so you really need to understand how, what, what’s, what are the what are the scale gaps? There’s lots of programs around that. Assess the scale gaps, or you you yourself can do it. And looking at you know what are the priorities, and then what are the skills? And then how do you match up with those skill sets

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Bill Michels: you? You have to? You have to really kind of align your program. If you have a gap that covers much of your organization, you’re gonna want to cover that in a concentrated way and spend your money where you have the biggest skill set gap. If you have outliers, then you may find easier ways. The learning programs or web-based learning programs that are going to help you. But you want to figure out what the gap is.

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Bill Michels: And then the one thing I think that you know is is really wrong, is it would, is when you try and take a canned program into an organization. People really resist it. They don’t it Doesn’t. Relate to them. If you’re in a oil and gas, they want to hear about oil and gas. If you’re an indirect, they want to hear about indirect. If you’re if you’re in a you know aerospace, they want to hear that. So one of the things you have to do in a training program is really kind of bring in case studies that relate to the people that they can relate to. Otherwise they’re they’re just going to dismiss the program.

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Bill Michels: I I think that that’s that’s one of the things you want to do. So you want to align your case studies and you want to align your business. You can’t talk about widgets anymore. I think that’s that’s not going to work.

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Bill Michels: I think one of the one of the gaps I see when i’m when i’m working with people and working with organizations is a lot of organizations want to do training for the sake of doing training, but they they fail to embed any of the training material. So it’s one thing to have everybody go to a nice workshop and and learn and have fun network, and then go back to your desk and do the same old thing again. You really wasted a lot of money. One of the organizations I’ve worked with. They had a an interesting program for category

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management, or actually it was cost and value improvement

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Bill Michels: they had to leave with. They they didn’t get credit from the company they had to get so many hours of credit to to advance their professional career. They didn’t get credit until they went back, did a cost to cost improvement program, and then did it, using the tools from the workshop, and and when they got done, what they were able to do was for every $1 in training. They were able to justify a 40 return on investment. So they actually made people use the tools and and embedded, and there’s other ways

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Bill Michels: to do it, too. You could do many clinics after we. One of the things I’ve done is after our workshops, maybe 5, 4 months later we’d have a Mini clinic with the management there, saying, what if you learned? What did you do? How to use the tools and and this other ways that you can embed it? But if you don’t embed it. You know you’re you’re You’re wasting your money.

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Bill Michels: and then measure the results. So we had one company that did a return on investment. But there’s lots of ways you can measure. Are you really getting a progression? And are you really getting the learning? And then the last thing is, make sure you. Your culture is a continuous improvement. Culture, You know, when we look at

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Bill Michels: the ways that learning is changed, we got e-learning. E learning itself is evolved from being, you know, slides on a on a thing that you read to, you know animation and quizzes and stuff. But the the learning thing is, you really have to be motivated to do it. And so what? What I found in one of the organizations I was in people would sign up for all these licenses, and then a week before the license everybody’s trying to get their requirement in and do the e-learning while they’re doing email and everything else. So you know you, you really have to make sure that

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Bill Michels: you know there’s a structured program you’re following up to see that people are doing it, and if you don’t do that, you need to think about it. Personalization, you, the program that you develop for someone really has to fit their needs, their career goals where they trying to achieve, how how can they help themselves in the career?

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Bill Michels: A lot of younger people like collaborative learning. So it’s changed where you know, learning and and groups of collaborative collaborative groups of subsets of people is another way. And then you know, of course, remote learning. So you can. You can actually really achieve what you what you can

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Bill Michels: We look at. We look at trends it. Personalization is a real trend. You got a career path. Here’s your career path. Here’s what you know. Here’s what you should know. Here’s where you should be. Those are some of the things you need. Digital digital transformation. So how people are struggling now with how can I make my

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Bill Michels: program fit the digital transformations? I’m going through that like you said, there’s a big focus on soft skills. People are coming in they the there’s 2 areas that you have to look at, or 3 areas. I had a a CEO asked me one day.

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Bill Michels: What should I recruit? What should I recruit in a a procurement, guy, or or or a a procurement person? And I started thinking about it. And I said, Well.

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Bill Michels: there’s really only 2 things you need. You need an emotional intelligence

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Bill Michels: and curiosity, because if you don’t have curiosity, and they’re not interested in finding out. Why does this work? How’s this market work? What’s the cost? How do this cost come about, then, then, that’s going to be a a gap, and if they can’t build relationships and be, you know, Bill Relational, that’s going to be a gap. You can teach the the other skills that you need cost analysis and and you know, market analysis and all those things. But you really get. You really need those 2 innate skills. So

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Bill Michels: current trans personalization, digital transformation focus on the saw skills.

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Bill Michels: continuous learning. So you really, you know, when you start a learning program, you want to make sure that you’re going to move it from where it is, and I, you usually a lot of companies, start with a fundamental boot camp. Then they move on to a more advanced course. And of course a lot of people come through that journey and some do not.

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Bill Michels: And then, you know, looking at the data, driven the data driven things like the scale gap analysis and other things.

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Bill Michels: So I mean, I think you have to commit to a development program for long term. I think one of the things that’s really important is finding a way to embed the skill sets.

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Bill Michels: I think you need to measure your success and see what it’ll be done right. What could you do better? I have one client in the home building business that after each workshop they refine the workshop, change it, and and the next work shop is related to the economy. What’s going on in the industry and and changes so they’re constantly refreshing the material. It’s not static material. It goes for 5 years or 6 years. I think

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Bill Michels: you you can’t look at the immediate benefit. But if you’re building a development program, you gotta remember that you’re actually impacting a person throughout their career in their life. And and i’m going to close with Recently

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Bill Michels: I I had a a note from a client that I worked with in in 2,000. It was a it was a a guy that was very young, new, and purchasing, and we forced him into category management, and we made him write very detailed category plans, and I got this note that said you’ll go. I thought you retired.

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Bill Michels: he said I hated you when I did the category plans, but now i’m the Ce. The Cpo. Of a major pharmaceutical company, and thank you for what you did for my career. So you You’re surprised at how you impact someone’s career, and you know you’re helping create a pathway, whether they’re going to stay in your organization and move on.

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Bill Michels: But if you give them skills that they can use forever, you’re helping the person. So with that i’ll go back to a Clive.

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Clive R Heal: Yeah. So thanks, thanks, Bill. So, Phil, I want to pick up on some of the points that you raised earlier, actually in terms of the changing role of procurement, the complexity of your tech stack. What are you gonna do? What are you gonna? What are you gonna focus on

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Clive R Heal: the the the the changing roles of procurement. What do you see as this sort of core competencies and for people going forwards?

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Philip Ideson: So I think. And you know this may be something that’s

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Philip Ideson: oh, definitely for debate. I think that a lot of the the traditionally call procurement skills have become commoditized.

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Philip Ideson: And so what I mean by that is, you know we can teach somebody how to

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Philip Ideson: run an Rfp process or to ask the right questions to understand, you know. Do some of the some of the discovery related to supply markets.

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Philip Ideson: Those are skills that you know you don’t need to be a procurement professional to have. In fact, you can be a. You know you can become somebody who comes from outside the account profession and kind of be dropped into a procurement role to do. Now for me the biggest skills, and I know this cliche is around the soft skills. Bill talked about them before

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Philip Ideson: is about relationships, you know.

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Philip Ideson: I think about.

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Philip Ideson: But what if organizations are still managed by cost savings. and I think about my career a lot of times

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Philip Ideson: I try to protect my stakeholders from procurement, and what I mean by that is, you know I may have been under pressure to save money, but my perspective was, if I can help them.

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Philip Ideson: ultimately achieve their goals. The savings will end up flowing, and we’ll find them somewhere as opposed to. Where can I take every sent out of the contract, or I would then I would have a philosophy of if we didn’t save the money. I know my stakeholder would still stand up for me, and believe I provide value for them, even though I didn’t save money for them.

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Philip Ideson: So that’s kind of the why I think relationships and building relationships, and you know, being able to empathize with people and those some of those discovery skills are really important, I think, as well, because of so much complexity.

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Philip Ideson: There’s

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Philip Ideson: that ability to take in information from all kinds of different sources. and you to synthesize that into something that actually tells a story.

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Philip Ideson: or that, you know, provide some recommendations or some advice differentiated from somebody that doesn’t have a procurement background the way that they would look at those. Because I think that’s something a role that we can really really play is.

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Philip Ideson: Everyone has access to the same information.

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Philip Ideson: How are we making different recommendations based on their experience and skills that tap into? That is really where the decision, the different points of differentiation after procurement.

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Clive R Heal: I i’m 100% with you on that. Let me let me share where I’m. Coming from. So competitive advantage is that you mentioned earlier is a time phenomenon. Right? You only have competitive advantage for a period of time, and then you’re You’re a leapfrog

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Clive R Heal: by by by somebody else. So I think part of the role of procurement is really to create value, opportunity, pathways, to to have first insight, to be able to leverage the technology to look at the global data like out there and say, what’s gonna happen, what could happen

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Clive R Heal: and what are the strategies I can develop from my, from my team, from my category, from my business, to to create some different opportunity pathways in terms of we can go this way. This is the value. This is the risk. These are the cost. We can go. We can go this way and so on, and then, if you step back. And you talked about all the digital technology that’s coming. Okay. So we got the Rpa machine learning

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Clive R Heal: and so on. That’s coming in, and that’s gonna take away all the transactional stuff. So then let’s assume all those roles have gone, and then we’re left with the more strategic work. So we’re left with the strategic work. What does that mean? A. I is coming in everywhere.

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Clive R Heal: It’s gonna it’s gonna provide services and opportunities for our business partners. They’ll be able to use AI. Should I use the AI, or should I go to a real obnoxious procurement person, or very helpful procurement person to be on who they are so for a procurement person, we should be thinking about

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Clive R Heal: what are the competences and the capabilities, and the characteristics, and the personas

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Clive R Heal: that actually will be last to be taken over by the AI, because that is where we can be. Differentiate ourselves against AI, and create the value and show the value. Demonstrate the value, we can deliver it. So the last 2 confidence is, I think they’ll be overtaken by AI, the last but one will be creativity. We’re already seeing that with Dali. But it’s not particularly good at the moment.

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Clive R Heal: And then human empathy right? The ability to empathize with the business with the people. So you know it’s very much a a social

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Clive R Heal: profession. Procurement is is, I think, analytical is also shows social as well that contact with the with the people. So it’s like. I see us becoming much more human centric, right. Human Centricity, I think, will become the most important driver of what we do in the future right? Do we really get what the business want? Do we really empathize with them? Do they really trust us and see the value that we’re bringing. Yes, they could use the technology. But we’re bringing insights from all our analytics. And so on.

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Clive R Heal: looking into the into the late. So you know who has the best algorithm will win in the future. Right? It’s it’s a battle of the algorithms. If your algorithm gets first insight on some an opportunity and you can bring that into your strategy and implement that and the business trust you, and they’re willing to work with you because of your empathy and the creativity to drive new

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new category stretches. So you know it’s some great technology at this. It’s on the the the great category stretches. But ultimately

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Clive R Heal: all category stretches right. You are gonna have to sit down and procurement face to face zoom with a with a salesperson and negotiate strategic negotiation. Yes, yeah, we’re going to get tactical negotiation technology packed them, and and under this others now coming into that space.

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Clive R Heal: But the other end of the of the value chain is strategic negotiation. And for me that is a key core competency in terms of how do you negotiate and create the value because it’s great having a strategy? But the rubber hits the road

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Clive R Heal: when I sit down with a supplier and negotiate and create that value. So this the creativity part that comes in from your strategies from your negotiation, capability, and competency, and

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Clive R Heal: an outcome. And then there’s the this: the the the ability to to empathize with the business. So for me human centricity will be the number. One thing going forward because the technology is done a lot of the rest, and that is how we’ll differentiate ourselves.

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Bill Michels: So I’ve got an audience question for you and Phil, and the question is from Caleb. And he asked, what are some of the good conferences or trade shows for supply chain professionals, and which one should they attend

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Clive R Heal: all that? Okay, let me let me have a go with that, and i’ll certainly hand over to Phil. Thank you. So I think it would be very unfair to to to to to pick any one particular. I think. There, there’s really 2 things

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Clive R Heal: the that you can look for first of all.

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Clive R Heal: the opportunity to connect a network with other people. You know the opportunity to sit down and understand other people’s, you know, use cases. What are they working on? What technology they’re implementing, what worked, what what didn’t work, and the other thing you get at the at the conference is the opportunity to

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Clive R Heal: to connect with some technology providers, pure tech companies as well. And as as Phil mentioned, I mean, there’s hundreds, if not thousands out there in different different sectors. Not right right now. It’s almost overwhelmingly explosion. You know the the technology asteroid that

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Clive R Heal: that finally landed right. It’s becoming for a long time, but finally landed. There’s so many choices now as you start to sit and develop your your digital roadmap your your tech stack in terms of what you’re going to be implementing. There’s a lot out there, and there there are people out there to try and help you. But what? What.

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Clive R Heal: What’s it gonna be? What are you gonna do? So for me? Conferences are about chance to meet People talk to people. What you doing, what you’re doing what you’re learning, what work, what didn’t work on a one to one basis. And of course this the presentations as well.

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Clive R Heal: But the opportunity to meet, and and I encourage people to go and talk to all these. Procure tech companies, find out what their products do, what they’re working on.

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Clive R Heal: because nobody really sees the totality of what’s available. You, haven’t got time to implement everything, so it’s like, what are you going to spend your money on you? What do you. Is it better to spend it on the the backbone or the the requisition to pay? Is it better to spend it on something that that is goes across, like, you know, quite a great category management or a training training technology. And then in future, I think it’ll be much more casually specific technologies or focused technologies that we look at as well. There’ll be it for a sustainability for

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Clive R Heal: or for for payments or RAM, contract management, or whatever as well. So I I didn’t answer your question. To which of the good conferences I think it’s for you to decide yourself. but you know, have a look at who’s going and have a look at who’s gonna be there that you can talk to Bill.

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Bill Michels: I also also look I I I also look at what what skill sets are you trying to to to bring in? And who are the speakers? And they do? They have the topics you want fail?

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Philip Ideson: Yeah. And I think that that’s a good point is like a lot of it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it.

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Philip Ideson: So it’s hard to say. I recommend a versus B.

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Philip Ideson: I would say, you know, if you are not used to.

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Philip Ideson: If you haven’t been to one, then you will go to any you can pick any of them, and you will the there Isn’t, You know the differences are on this the the edges, so most of them will do something similar for you.

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Bill Michels: I just encourage you to go because it’s just great to meet people. So so, Phil, you you you’ve interviewed many global leaders. What are the things that keep people up at 9, or what are the things that they’re worried about?

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Philip Ideson: Yeah, and that’s a great question, Bill. I think that

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Philip Ideson: a lot of procurement leaders still are concerned about relevancy. you know, and i’d have challenges with.

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Philip Ideson: I think we’ve we’re changing from

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Philip Ideson: procurement leaders, not necessarily having the vision, and being happy with the status quo to they have the vision, but not quite sure how to execute it and get the funding to support it, because it’s still always a matter of going and having to ask and make business cases for funding. So I think that that’s

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Philip Ideson: one of the things I see is I i’m. I’m. Excited by the fact that there are new visions for the future of procurement, but a lot of cpus is still challenged on how to make that reality. What’s also interesting though, is, I see a lot of at least the ones that I talk to, and you know we talk about empathy before

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Philip Ideson: I really, you know, recognize the challenges that they’ve put their team members under for the last 2 or 3 years. I mean, it’s been pretty constant of battling Covid or battling supply chain issues of, you know, battling we we we we trained sometimes to get that that dopamine hit, you know when you save money.

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Philip Ideson: and when we haven’t been saving money over the last couple of years and a lot of cases, there’s been a lot of high coverings. How do you up the troops to to to help them recognize that the business doesn’t see as being their fault that they didn’t save money? It’s just the trying to mitigate all these different externalities. So I see a lot of concern around that, too. But

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Philip Ideson: generally I see excitement about the future.

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Philip Ideson: I think that there’s just still concerns around execution.

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Bill Michels: And and Clive, Why, you know, you’ve got a new product. Why, why the focus on negotiation training?

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Clive R Heal: Yeah, bill. Negotiation is a corporate current competency. I think it will be in the future, I think, as I mentioned the negotiation, bots will be coming in to do the tactical negotiation. But the rubber hits the road when you sit down and negotiate

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Clive R Heal: with a supplier, and ultimately that’s, I think, an opportunity to to create great value. I think the bill of Phil mentioned about the the the changing competences going going forwards. I think negotiation will continue to be a

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Clive R Heal: a a a core competency. And so that’s what we were trying to do with Lebanon. AI is create a technology that enables people not only to learn from digital mentors, your pre negotiation, post, negotiation, training, and so on, but actually have the ability to practice, because

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Clive R Heal: and yeah, negotiation is a social process. It’s it’s just 2 or more people coming together to create an outcome together potentially, if they, if they’re trying to get trying to, if they both want it to succeed.

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Clive R Heal: And so the ability to practice using conversational AI and sales avatars

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Clive R Heal: is something that that we now provide. I think we’re gonna see Avatar is coming in a lot more in the future, and I know my personal view is, I think we’re headed towards the the the Meta verse, and there will be a procurement, Meta verse, and that will be the space where we’re able to bring together all these different technologies and actually the operating environment for us in the future will be a virtual reality, environment. And so with Lebanese AI, we’re

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Clive R Heal: we’re creating virtual reality. Versions of sales avatars that you can negotiate with with sales people. It’s. This is one of these competences where you need to practice practice practice. Right? So you know I’ve done. I’ve I’ve lost count of how many excel workshops I’ve been to, and you know you learn it. And you you forget a week later, and I can’t remember how to do the

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Clive R Heal: the complicated Macros whatever right anymore. But but you you have to keep practicing right. It’s it’s it’s a bit like you know. You wouldn’t give somebody one driving less, and then give them the keys to the car and let them go off and learn by bumps. And of course, that’s what you know knocks and bucks, but that’s what we do in procurement. Right? We

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Clive R Heal: people go, and they might do one negotiation training workshop, and then they’ll they’ll let loose on you know a 1010,000,000dollar spend or something, and that’s that’s almost criminal. In a way we have to. We have to gear our people up with the right compensation, not just negotiation, but other training areas as well. We have, we have to, and and it’s still mentioned. I think the competency skill set is going to

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Clive R Heal: be changing significantly in the future, and we have to recognize that. So you know it’s not only negotiation skills, it’s creativity, it’s it’s empathy. It’s analytical skills, it’s it’s the ability to to to stand up and put forward a business case for change. And

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Philip Ideson: now it’s definitely the time to put forward a this case for change, because the world is changing. The technology is changing, our roles changing right? Everything’s changing. So we got another question from the Audience: Sorry, Bill Jane, for just sorry. But do you mind if I just jump in? I just wanted to add something on negotiation, if you didn’t mind, because what’s really interesting to me is

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Philip Ideson: how we talked about

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Philip Ideson: procurement evolving. You know, my hypothesis is that we have much smaller teams working on much more high impactful work.

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Philip Ideson: and that’s not necessarily a negative, because more companies will see value in that. So we’ll have more spread and more distribution of procurement professionals across more companies. But those teams are going to be a lot smaller When you think about negotiation, then I think that because the the blocking and the tackling

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Philip Ideson: negotiation, if you will.

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Philip Ideson: That’s kind of gonna be automated. That’s going to be. You’re gonna have the bots. And you’re gonna have, you know, even procurement not necessarily getting involved in that kind of thing. But what it means is as we’re working on more impactful things

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Philip Ideson: that we’re gonna be a lot less negotiations. But those negotiations are going to be high stakes and high value, and so one it goes to the fact that we lose the muscle memory of doing negotiations if you’re not doing it all the time, because you’re not just doing it, you know 3 bits in a by, and having a quick negotiation, or whatever on some of the smaller stuff, so you get out of touch with it.

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Philip Ideson: But then the negotiations you do a lot more impactful. So the impact of those negotiations are a lot more impactful which speaks to something. You know you’re talking, Clive around

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Philip Ideson: you. You kind of need to be doing it and learning and practicing, and and remembering how to do it for when you need it, which is really interesting from a you know, when you start talking about digital. And you know, avatar, base negotiation training because you have the ability to do that whenever you want, whenever you feel you need it.

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Philip Ideson: As a person just waiting for the next training session.

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Clive R Heal: Yeah, we can get actually, really, really good at that, because, you know, we can actually give real time feedback in terms of the power of the language that you use the arguments that you used, and how well that came over in your negotiation when you’re negotiating with the sales avatar, and you can repeat it 50 times, and you learn.

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Clive R Heal: You learn every time, and and people people certainly do learn one of the things that if you look forward in terms of some of the some of the areas of training that that that Bill talked about.

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Clive R Heal: people want really training on demand. They want it, you know, when they want it. Not necessarily. At 90’clock on the Monday morning. I want to be able to do it when i’m available when I’ve got the time, and we see actually people doing training out of hours, even even even at weekends.

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Clive R Heal: I think there’s a big difference as well between training and and development. Right? So we need to keep developing, developing a use of we’re developing procurement. Confidence is all competencies so, and and training is almost like a one off session, whereas how do you create an ongoing development customized development

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Clive R Heal: program that is lifelike for for people and mirrors reality. You know the the the reality of a of of the day today, and it’s gotta be gotta be fun as well. So you know, people don’t remember. People don’t have spare time anymore. It’s like, you know. There’s lots to be done, and they have to slot it in. So you gotta make anything you do, is you?

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Bill Michels: It’s got to be a fun experience for for for people so quite here. Here’s a a question. Why do you think avatars will be better to train than train with than rather than real people.

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Clive R Heal: I think it’s a number that’s a good question. I think it’s a number of reasons. First of all.

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Clive R Heal: avatars in theory are less biased. We all have subconscious bias in in terms of how we work, how we, how we interact with different people, I mean within Lebanon we’re

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Clive R Heal: We’re creating an advertised with different personas. Right? So how do you negotiate against somebody who’s logical analytical data driven process driven and that’s very different than the negotiating with somebody who’s very

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Clive R Heal: emotional, maybe a bit irrational, not not analytical at all, and she has a very different perspective on things as like. How do you learn to do that? And of course we’ve learned by negotiating over the years with these different different people. But with avatars you can. You can create those different. You can create those different personas. The Avatar is always there, I mean, you know it. He She is available 24 7 3, 65. And yeah, we’ve seen people locking on on a Sunday afternoon to do their to do their training, right? Because

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that’s when that’s when they want to do it. So it’s it’s it’s it, the advertiser. All is available.

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Clive R Heal: and and of course, the avatars are learning as well, because underlying avatars are algorithms that are driving them and the algorithm learns every time. So it becomes the you know the elephant and never forget. So you’re negotiating with an avatar that’s heard. 500 different people try to negotiate the same point right? And this learn for every one of those right, so it gets harder and harder, and a and and and not forgetting Bill

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Clive R Heal: Sales people have a huge amount of negotiation training compared to procurement people, so it’s kind of sad in a way, we’ve got great technology yet. We come up with a strategy. We understand what we’re going to do. We sit down to negotiate, and the person we’re negotiating with. This had 7, 10 times the amount of training that we’ve had. And so

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Clive R Heal: yeah, what are you gonna get? The outcome is gonna be harder if you’re up against an expert compared to your

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Bill Michels: I’m gonna throw out to you and Phil. It’s how can procurement officials effectively negotiate with suppliers based in different countries and cultures, and you both have experience, and I do, too, doing that. So I, the who wants to take that one.

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Philip Ideson: I can start with that one, if you like. I mean, I love that question because

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Philip Ideson: it is so different. You know you think about. You have to understand the culture of the team you negotiating with before you even start. You know that starts in the planning phase. You know whether

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Philip Ideson: I I remember I had. I was negotiating something in Japan, actually with the Japanese supplier, and it was we were doing in person. I was sat on one side the table, and there was a team of 15, sat on the other side of the table in a line with a Union Jack, an American flag, and the Japanese flag in the middle of us.

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Philip Ideson: and you know very different negotiation. And sitting in a a meeting room in the Us. With someone who’s a Us. Provider, and it’s more of a informal chat.

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Philip Ideson: So it’s really all about understanding what the cultures and the the practice of the people that you are negotiating with.

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Philip Ideson: and I see it around tailoring your approach to what their customers, you know, Don’t, expect them to

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Philip Ideson: to tell themselves with your culture. Now they may do, but actually you doing it with

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Philip Ideson: with that quote just shows an additional level of respect which actually might help you in terms of some of the finding, some of the outcomes of that training. But that’s always the approach that I took. But I even Bill, I’d love to know how you approach that as well

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Bill Michels: it. Yeah, I I actually conducted a training program in Japan, and I told you guys can do it in your own culture and your own language. And it was very interesting because one guy got up and he did a his session. The other guy sat there and listened the whole time, and then he sat down, and the other guy got up, and it was like a debate, and it was very polite. I can imagine, when they come in, and you know, see us jumping in and doing the things we do. It’s it’s interesting. And then the the other thing I learned one time

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Bill Michels: about about cultures. Was I was working at a a, a, a, a, a sort of like a sister company. So we had done a a contract with a Chinese company, and we did it like we would do it in the Us. And we sent them the contract, and the other group

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Bill Michels: had a signing ceremony, where they they came over and signed, and they all had their chance to speak. And you know who do you think had the better relationship over time? It was a person that had the signing ceremony and went through the cultural place. So I think you have to understand the culture, get to the cultural norms and and and and really be, you know, be understanding. And I I think another thing is in the in negotiations you really got. We think it 400 words a minute.

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Bill Michels: but we speak at 125. So when someone speaking, we’re always thinking, what am I going to say to this? Or that so listening is a key part. But anyway, that that’s the end of the the questions. I think it’s a very great question that she, Bill, in terms of

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Clive R Heal: culture. I think that the there’s there’s there’s more diversity than we think right there’s there. There is the

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Clive R Heal: cultural diversity there, there’s there. There are other diversity as well that we see in terms of people’s, personas, and how that they how they react to Bill. I know the work that you’ve done is it has identified 5 sort of different types of sales negotiator, and and obviously within 11 area. I’ve actually building

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Clive R Heal: avatars for each of those different personas. I know you’ve got different styles that you’ve seen over the year. So so there’s the the cultural element. But there’s also the actual persona of the individual. How does he or she think, how does he or she work? And you know we’ve all met so different different sales, people with

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Clive R Heal: with with with different backgrounds. I do think it does come down to, though the ability to connect with that person I mean it is a real person now of days. Of course it can be on the zoom call as well They could be a the 2D rather 3D right in front of you. But it is the how do you connect with with that with that person. And how do you build

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Clive R Heal: a relationship with that person, so that together you can, you can create create a great value of you.

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Clive R Heal: Are you on mute Bill?

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Bill Michels: The one more question that’s probably the last one. Do you think that there will be a place for negotiation with it. Procurement 10 to 15 years, with the progression of different technologies.

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Clive R Heal: I’ll i’ll i’ll go first on that one person, I think the answer is, Yes, I think we’ll see the negotiation technology, the bots that that Phil talked about taking over more and more.

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Clive R Heal: I certainly think that ultimately we could create our own avatars that negotiate on our behalf of knowing all the parameters.

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Clive R Heal: But ultimately, as for strategic negotiations, I think, for now I I think that is going to be a person to person thing. And the reason I say that is because

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Clive R Heal: there are so many, as you know, Bill, and some of the some of the examples that we’ve worked through in some negotiations. There are so many moving parts right, you know. You could. You could focus on this. You could focus on that. You could focus on this. You know the CEO wants this, the quality people want that the suppliers ask for this, and other suppliers come in here with this this offer, and so that it it tends to get

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Clive R Heal: quite complex when you’re doing a strategic negotiation, and I think that’s where the the human ingenuity comes in ultimately, you know. Ultimately, maybe, the AI gets to that point where it can do

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Clive R Heal: can do virtually everything I don’t want to get involved in negotiation, negotiating the stationary contract at home. I’m more than happy for for a negotiation, but to to be able to do that for me, and you know it changes the contract. It negotiates the pricing incomes a different supplier tomorrow. The pop did it all it’s switched over the supply. It manage the the inbound, the delivery, the requirements, everything. I’m. Absolutely fine with that.

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Clive R Heal: I do think, though, that using our creativity

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Clive R Heal: is a way of creating more value. That’s not to say that we can’t really leverage AI in terms of helping us on what should be our negotiation strategy? What’s happening in the marketplace right now, where are the opportunities that that we’ve got? So it’s bringing those all together. So this is where

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Clive R Heal: the the procurement creativity, I think, is going to become more important because that enables greater value. Creation

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Bill Michels: on this one, you know. In the in the mid nineties I wrote a book called Transform Your supply chain, and and some of some of the model that I put in the book is that you know we’ll have tied integrated supply chains, and you know. We see that when we look at automotive, because the the domestic manufacturers have a supply chain, the Japanese have a supply chain, and we start to see those those specialty supply chains coming together.

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Bill Michels: I think one of the thing that you’ll Pierre Mitchell, once said something that resonated with me forever, he said, when you’re picking a supplier, you’re not just picking a supplier. You’re architecting your supply chain.

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Bill Michels: and I think what’s happening is as we get the transactions to go away, and as we look at you know the value of procurement it’s going to be at strategically managing all those links in the supply chain, aligning the business goals of that supply chain getting that supply chain to be the most competitive supply chain it can be.

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Bill Michels: And so I think there’ll always be a role for procurement when it comes to you really moving forward the strategic suppliers in in an integrated supply chain. That’s my view.

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Philip Ideson: Yeah. And I just wanted to add on. You know, I think, that go back to what what I said earlier around the being a lot few negotiations. But those negotiations being more impactful. I’m sure the technology will ultimately tell us. These are 3 points of negotiation that remain that you need to actually speak face to face with somebody, because they’ll be

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Philip Ideson: logic that’s built in about, you know, ranges of acceptability or otherwise, on most of the the points within a contract or within a a price negotiation. But the other thing I wanted to say is

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Philip Ideson: every discussion we have with a stakeholder internally is negotiation, like every time I talk to my child, it’s a negotiation. So a negotiation isn’t just.

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Philip Ideson: you know, trying to negotiate some terms and conditions are trying to negotiate a price. It’s around negotiating an approach. It’s about driving. Change. It’s around understanding different people’s perspectives, you know, and as you go the personas, you know, I imagine. Then you go. You, you you you, the persona is now the CEO of my company.

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Philip Ideson: And how do I negotiate with the CEO of my company to, you know, be allowed to even have a role to play in, you know, topic a. On topic, c. So negotiation goes a long way, a lot further than just terms and conditions and pricing, which is something that I just wanted to add on there.

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Bill Michels: Yup Perfect, I do, Bill. I have one question. It’s something that I’ve just been holding on to since you were doing talking a little bit about training. You know. We talked about

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Philip Ideson: looking for people who are curious, you know. So they’re self driven. You’ve talked to Clive about people going into your technology, and 30’clock on us on the afternoon and wanting to learn themselves. But as we all know that’s the minority versus the majority when it comes to training. And one of the biggest challenges with training is actually

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Philip Ideson: accountability. So i’m just really interested in. Kind of how you think about for those who are on the call that you know they’re not the curious individuals, but the ones leading the team who are trying to

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Philip Ideson: think about. How do I encourage my team to to get the most out of the training opportunities? How do you think about driving accountability.

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Bill Michels: That’s great. Because I went. I went into a a technology company, and they they wanted a training program, but they don’t. They don’t force anybody to go through training, and what we were able to do was we? We actually built 3 colleges within within that client, and we had a client, a college for sourcing a college for

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Bill Michels: purchase to pay, and a college for contracting, and what they what the organization did was they created a a price at the top that if you, if you went through this level, of course, is you got a company bachelors, or a company masters or a company? Phd. And so it there really was a gamification. People got into the training program they they wanted to learn, so they they. They all started competing as people started to get the recognition within the organization. More people

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Bill Michels: wanted to join the organization, but I think you have to be very creative today in terms of how do you? How do you? They a lot of companies are not mandating training, but they want people to actually learn and and grow. So I think you have to in. In that case, every time you did certain things you got badges, prizes, you know, jackets, or whatever, and they had a a university that they could. They could grow in. And the and when you build your when you build your training program in today’s environment, you, you, you know

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Bill Michels: it. It is a combination of all the kinds of learning you can do. So it’s, ebooks, e-learning, remote learning mini clinics, webinars, video programs, and you have to put together a complete package because people learn a different ways. And I think, as you’re building your program, you have to think, how how do people learn? When do they learn? How can you? How can you motivate them to move on one of the incentives you can give them, I tell you, if you don’t give some of the younger people

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Bill Michels: opportunities to develop. Then they won’t be there. I think this the sad thing that i’m seeing in the marketplace is that in in in in older days you actually worked in different parts of the business, and you got the business acumen, and you you played. But now I see a compartment compartment Really, people put into compartments, and they don’t move outside of that, so they’re not really sure how the business is is growing, and if you can’t get them exposed to the broader business of what’s happening in market, why is finance doing these things? What’s important to finance, especially if You’re in a commodity business, and you have to work with, You know, volatile commodities. You need to be working

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Bill Michels: finance. And you guys know what the finance rules are, or if you got a cre operations critical thing, so I think it. It’s important to get people to expose to business, and I think it’s important, important to you know. Let them learn how they have to learn with the with the tools that they have to learn. But you have to be really creative about building your program.

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Clive R Heal: I think I would say, Bill, the procurement is an accelerating train, and the train is going faster and faster and faster, and the skills that people have this this year. Today. Aren’t going to be acceptable to keep up with the train a year from now, so there needs to be a recognition that

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Clive R Heal: we have to keep developing. Everybody has to keep developing, just to stay on the trained in terms of where it is. I mean. The things are moving so fast in procurement right now. It’s like.

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Clive R Heal: Hey, you’re from now. You’ll need new skills, new experiences, and be able to demonstrate that as well. One of the things that that we’re able to do with our algorithms is actually quantitatively

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Clive R Heal: report back to individuals in terms of how well they’re how well they’re doing, how well they’re they’re negotiating, and the the ability to do that, and we’ll see that in everything, I think in terms of more quantitative analysis. The CPU can sit down and say.

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Clive R Heal: You know who is my best negotiator, who is my best negotiator on this this, with this type of salesperson, or on this type of material, and I think in the future I wouldn’t be surprised if on my resume it. Says, You know you have the 27 best negotiator in New York today. Right? Great cause he told me it was, anyway. So

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Bill Michels: Yeah, well let’s do. Let’s do just one last thought as we we leave the Webinar, so i’ll give each you a chance to give a last thought, and then we’ll we’ll end the webinar.

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Clive R Heal: Nope.

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Philip Ideson: yeah, I think for me. It’s, you know, just building what we just talked about then, and the gamification which really interesting to me, because I think

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Philip Ideson: you know, I like competing against myself. And so the idea of constantly negotiating against an avatar to to to get a better scar every time I do. It is something that would motivate me. So I think that’s just gonna be. Really, this is interesting. New ways

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Philip Ideson: of of learning

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Philip Ideson: which are done in a safe space. I think that a lot of people fear learning in a in a once in many environment, because they don’t want to be seen as the one that doesn’t understand. But when you’re doing it in a one on one environment, when it’s just, you know you and kind of an avatar. I think it’s really interest the concept to me is really interesting. I think that I can definitely see

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Philip Ideson: how that can change the

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Philip Ideson: you know they up taking their for the impact of learners when we’re teaching them on all these really important topics.

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Bill Michels: And and my my thought is that the you know it?

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Bill Michels: If we talk about the the the Avatar people that are introverted, or don’t want to be in front of their boss negotiating it’s. It’s really a safe place for them. But I hope. I hope people actually think about how they’re going to develop a training program. And when you develop training program, how are you going to embed the skills, and then make sure that it’s going to be something that people can take with them forever. It’s important.

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Clive R Heal: Thanks, Bill. Let me just wrap this up first of all to everybody on the Webinar today. Thank you so much for joining us. This is our first Webinar. Please keep a look out for our next Webinar a month from now.

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Clive R Heal: Obviously, I need to thank Bill Michael’s with his huge experience in training over the over the years and consultancy, and pretty much, every sector in every every continent for sure, and and fell as well. Who is? Who is our guest and expert today, are a 1 million

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Clive R Heal: download person. The art procurement. I recommend it. Please check it out. Yeah, I’m sure you can. You can find that pretty easy on the on the web if you’re not already watching it.

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Clive R Heal: I recommend you tune in 1 million plus viewers.

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Philip Ideson: That’s about that’s about half the number of current people in the world. They’re about 2 million procurement people globally about a 1 million of them speak English. So that means, if you think about it, every English speaking procurement person in the world is this watched at least one of we know there still work to do. But we’re really proud of, you know. We see it as being, you know, the the podcast and everything associated with it. Really, the world’s, you know, largest resource of free training.

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Philip Ideson: free inspiration, and you know, and of course that’s not possible. With all the different people that that were able to interview and bring their experiences and an insight into the community.

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Clive R Heal: Okay, well, thanks to everyone, thanks to bill, thanks to Phil, and thanks to everyone joining the Webinar today, it’s great to have a chance to share some thoughts with you and look out for our next Webinar a month from now. Thanks, and have a great day. Everyone.