Modern Procurement - Michael Leiken

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Welcome to the Did you know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders and executives at amazing technology companies that can help your business save time and money and grow. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business. 1.2s Hello, everyone. This is Victor with Varisource . Welcome to another episode of the Did you know Podcast, and as part of our Modern Procurement series, we're going to be interviewing a lot of amazing procurement management executives to provide insights and feedback and suggestions and experience on what modern procurement looks like in 2023 and beyond. And we're super excited to have Mike Lichen, who's the VP of Procurement Strategy for In Market, with us today.

Hey. Good morning, Victor. How are you

doing? Great. Thanks a lot for joining the show and dropping some truths and insights. Man so if you don't mind, Mike, maybe if you can give us the audience a little bit of background about In Market and also your personal background. Right. We always love the story of how did you get into procurement and kind of that career a journey, I guess. 1.6s

Yeah, absolutely. So I've been with inmarket for just over a year and a half now. I'm the first hire for procurement. So greenfield opportunity to set up a procurement function from scratch, which is what I did in my prior role for lendingtree. When it comes to in market itself, we're essentially a $300 success intelligence platform, and our customers, our brands and advertisers, where what we're helping them accomplish essentially is delivering the right message to the right consumer at the right time. And we do this in a whole host of ways, which are supported by additional value adds, like performance management, insights, measurements. We help optimize campaigns, build audiences and the like. So it's pretty exciting in terms of the career as a whole. I've always been in sourcing and procurement, believe it or not. And I don't mind saying that I've eclipsed the 20 year mark to age myself, 1.3s but I just fell into it. 2.1s I was in the latter stages of college, and unfortunately we had 911 happen. So the original plan, which was New York and investment banking, 1.1s wasn't in the cards. Our career fair was even canceled, 1.1s as crazy as that sounds. But those were crazy times. And I basically just had my network on the lookout for anything that they came across, if they would let me know. And at the time, I worked for the University of Miami football team, and our offensive line coach, Art Kehoe, actually reached out to me because one of his buddies who worked with a company was looking for somebody for something. 1.5s That's the extent end of what I was told. I'm like, great,

set up a meeting. I love it. Something, someone, or something. Boom. That's a career rented.

Yeah. And it's even funnier to share more, if you don't mind. But we set up a meeting and off I remember at Plains Day in an offensive meeting room. 1.2s And we're sitting across this ginormous table, and he starts trying to pitch me on what the job is, what the role is, and he's talking about, even at the time, terminology that I wasn't familiar with, can liners and cutlery and I know trash bags, right? I know plastic forks. But it ended up basically being the he consulted for the company that managed the supply chain for Subway North America, and the person that was responsible for packaging was going to be moving into proteins. So they were looking for his replacement. And I was, like, open to anything and willing to check it out and explore. So I had a meeting, a lunch meeting with the director and that person who was going to be my mentor as he transitioned. And we agreed to kind of see how it would go. So as I was finishing the year, I started working a few days a week, and I fell in love with it. It was just a natural fit for personality and skill set, fortunately. And they liked me, so I stuck around for a little bit before moving on and exploring new commodities and industries.

Yeah. Was it the numbers? Was it the negotiation? Was it the people dealing? What was it that made you kind of attract you the most to the career?

I've always loved negotiating. Like, I'll negotiate anything, anytime, just for fun. 1.3s You can go to a Starbucks and negotiate deals with the grocery line. I've actually just made a game out of it. I intentionally did a while back to get comfortable, because you have to be comfortable asking for things that may seem faux paw or outlandish because you never know what you can achieve. But definitely the negotiating was top of the list, but also in terms of just like, critical thinking and analytical skills. And back then, it was living in spreadsheets to analyze. 2.1s Freight rates and various truckload quantities and pricing. 1.9s Those were probably the core basis for what made it stick.

Yeah. You don't get anything if you don't ask. Right. But one thing that I love to get your thoughts on is personal branding. First of all, I think no matter what role roles you're in, personal brand is important, but you're pretty active on social, meaning LinkedIn. That's obviously the business social. But you're pretty active with different posts and thoughts and pretty active. So what made you kind of get into that? And how do you suggest maybe other procurement people can 1.6s also get more active on social for their own brand? 1.1s

Yes, I guess a few two different things on that. 1.7s For a while, early on, I didn't I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't concerned with it. I was just focused on and concerned with my performance and trying to excel in the role at the company. 2.8s Of course, it reaches a point where you get more insights and awareness to how the world works and how big business works. And just because you have goals and motivations or past performance doesn't mean that you're entitled to anything. Right. So you have to make decisions on you're either happy with your situation or you're going to make a change and go after something else that makes you happier. Hopefully. Yeah. And doing that, it's really to make it easier to be successful in making changes in your career, especially having a network, is a tremendous, tremendous help. And then, especially nowadays, living the world we live in, and this is even now, but 15 years ago, LinkedIn is where people go. It's where hiring managers go to look for candidates, where all the different firms and HR recruiters go, so they find you maybe with other people with titles and generic profile characteristics that they're looking for, what's going to set you apart. Right. Have you actually taken time to be thoughtful in terms of highlighting all these different skills or certifications or work you've done, whether it's with partner companies or just you taking initiative on your own to get involved in different groups? There's ism there's cigarettes procurement foundry now, 1.9s so there are a lot of avenues you can take, but it takes time and commitment and you have to want to do it. But it definitely pays off in the big picture in terms of just building a broader network and making it much easier to make transitions and to advance yourself throughout your career.

Yeah, that's amazing tips, amazing feedback, and I have seen more people do it, regardless of their role, 1.2s as we get into kind of a lot of amazing conversations you and I talked about. So the first one is, obviously you've been doing this close to 20 years and seen it from direct services to also indirect services. Again, procurement, as I mentioned, is one of the toughest departments because literally there's so many services and products. But how has the procurement role change in the last two or three years in the overall kind of world that you've

seen? 1.3s As you know, the Pandemic obviously created significant global economic issues. Right. Most have been. 2.7s Revealed or resulting from being supply chain related and 1.6s good, bad or otherwise. I think fortunately those really highlighted 1.2s the importance and actual dependence that companies have on their procurement and supply chain functions. So that heightened awareness, awareness and having greater visibility 1.5s definitely I think helps give those functions and roles 1.1s much more and broader credibility across the enterprise. 1.2s And then, of course, going through those issues and being able to mitigate things to demonstrate resourcefulness and identify and deliver solutions during those challenging times, whether it's looking for PPE, whether it's working with supply partners to develop new products 1.4s that also then was able to turn into hopefully, but generally speaking, more recognition, I think, for the field than otherwise was typical. 1.1s

Yeah, obviously a lot of procurement want, they call it a seat at the table, right. 1.6s They don't want to be approached when you already made a decision just coming to them for the final kind of approval, but they want to be part of the interaction and the discussion early on. 1.4s I totally see that where you're coming from. So obviously what are the top challenges you can think of? Actually? Yeah,

jump back and add a few more things if you don't mind. But I think definitely for whoever listens to your podcast, hopefully can benefit from or find relevant one, which I'll be super quick on is I'd say the hot topics definitely shifted during the pandemic. Historically. Traditionally, I think financial value and related metrics have always been probably the primary focus, 1.4s but that definitely shifted probably first to diversity, which is still obviously up there, and then also to sustainability. Right. ESG these obviously aren't relevant in the same way to all companies, depending upon your industry and if you're public or private. But during that time, there definitely have been a lot of new conferences, newly developed certifications, new roles that are created within companies 1s that didn't exist before. So that's definitely something new. And then the other thing which. 1.5s I'd say probably started more five, six years ago versus just past two to three. And you're certainly aware of and in this is the fact that the procure tech space has just completely exploded. I mean now there are more opportunities to actually 1.9s continuously basically like to iterate and improve on how you're doing things because you have a chance to work with companies like Verisource that are building great products and solutions that want to collaborate and want to have mutually beneficial valueadded type relationships versus the traditional vendor type relationship. 1.8s And I can say that for folks like myself, like I said, that have been doing this for a while, 1.4s that was definitely a limitation before where now even if you're thinking about your own functions tech stack, you can very easily look for best in class point solutions versus being stuck with rigid end to end suites. Not that those haven't evolved and gotten better as well, but it's just a whole different landscape now. 1.1s

Yeah. First of all, super grateful for for that plug there, Mike. I didn't I didn't pay Mike or tell Mike to say it. So it's true. That's true. Very nice. Surprising plug, but but yeah, no, 100% agree with you. You know, when you look at sales teams or marketing teams, they have tools. They have all all the tools in the world. I think there's like 25,000 marketing tools alone like that's. Right. You know, and they all have tools to help them do their job cheaper, better, faster, easier. And I think you're seeing that now where people are building technology for procurement because it's an important function and a lot of things you need that assistance from these tools. So absolutely. That's a great topic. We could probably talk for hours about 1.3s what are some of the top challenges you mentioned some. Right. But what are the top challenges that procurement faces today, you think?

Resources, 1.7s unfortunately, in my experience, 1s that's really been a key challenge throughout my career. There's always been, like you said, other teams that when there's a focus on top line, right. Sales and marketing being the obvious, investing heavily in those areas, whether it's human capital or technology or budgets for everything and anything, because they have goals at the highest level focused on sales. 1.3s Despite the fact that procurement sourcing is the one 1s hopefully involved in enabling, getting that done in a thoughtful way that mitigates risk and maximizes value. 1.3s We've always seemed to be forced to operate pretty lean and do more with less. That's another thing of resulting from the pandemic. Right. Everybody kind of got forced into a do more with less mode, which for us was the norm, and only got more challenging. So resources is definitely 1.7s you can just do so much more. Like, you can add so much value in so many different ways. If only. Right. If only you had a person to focus on XYZ or this other tool, because it's a brand new tool that addresses the need you have, but that never existed before, so you've never had it. So people are just accustomed to bau, and this is just how it is. Why do we have to go invest in that tool? Yeah. Even if it's not costly, it's just the mindset. Right. 1s So that's certainly top of mind for me. And I guess the only other thing that really comes to mind, and it's also been it's not a new thing, but it's. 1.6s Related to, I guess, your comment about having a seat at the table, but it's more so branding of the function and how to change the broad perception that we're probably considered mostly a necessary evil 1.4s versus what we all want to be. Which is, and I'm sure this is cliche verbiage, but we want to be a trusted part partner. Like, that's true. We want to be viewed as a resource that's helping its stakeholders, protecting the business and adding value in a whole host of ways for the company. 1.7s

Yeah, those are obviously a lot of challenge, same challenges we hear from a lot of procurement teams. But the way you described it, that was awesome. And we're going to talk later on about how maybe to some advice to solve some of these things. So when it comes to overall spend, there are just so many suppliers and services and renewals and all of these things a procurement team has to deal with, whether you have one people or three people, one person or three people have any resource, it just seems like never enough, right? So how can a company actually manage all of that? 2.2s

Well, it's difficult, without question. And you're talking to somebody who now for his second go round, is a one person team 1.6s in the prior life, 1.8s added team members, and we grew to help try to 1.3s maintain our performance, not only in the results, but also in speed, 1.1s as demand also grew. Right now, like I said, I'm a one person show, so you inevitably are constrained just purely by time, right? 1.4s I'd say the first thing that would have to be a priority is understanding your spend. Because until you can get a grasp of what you even have, there's no way for you to determine how you're going to try to optimize it, much less literally planning and taking actions to ultimately realize the desired benefit. Yeah, once you have usable data. I guess if we're thinking in terms of technology spend, as an example, 2.3s my recommendation is you really would want to partner with your CTO, in this case, the leader to ideally designate, like, what is our company's approved tech. Stack 1.5s developed a plan. How are we going to prioritize tackling all the other stuff we have? What can we minimize, what can we actually eliminate? And then to do that, you have to understand the contracts, right? Are their contracts, are they auto renewing? Is it on a credit card? Just getting automatically charged every month? You really need to have the data. 1.1s And that's also, I guess we're mentioning the procure tech space where if you are a one person show, you definitely need and rely upon companies whose products and services enable you to do these things. It's just not enough time for a person to try to track down the information, much less manipulate it and turn it into something consumable and actionable.

So, quick question, Adam, for you there, Mike, is you talked about stakeholders maybe getting that data from the stakeholder, but oftentimes we see that stakeholders are busy too. They got to run It or other areas themselves. They don't have time or resource or data or tools to track their data either, which indirectly makes it harder for you because then you're expecting to get that information from the department. Why do you think that is? That the stakeholders, whether in It or others, are also struggling with that? Is it just because of lack of resource and time as well? Because we hear the same thing from it. They have lack of resource too, on top of everything they have to do. Is it the same kind of challenge?

It's going to sound horrible to say, but they don't care. But the reason isn't that they don't care about their work or the company, right? It's what they're focused on. And what they're tasked with is not. 1.5s Maintaining contracts right or being aware of when an auto renew is going to be triggered if we don't decision providing notice or negotiating a renewal or keeping things status quo, that's not part of what they do. So hopefully there's a great relationship and they're accustomed to just depending upon and working with a team like ours that does handle that but when you think of like what do they have? First thing I do when I start here and I'm making the rounds, introducing myself to different 1.4s leaders within different teams and trying to understand who their partners are and trying to grab contracts and data early, you find that many times they've inherited whatever they have, right? Yeah, they've inherited it. It's being used, it's part of a process. The team says they need it and they don't even have the documentation or know who decision getting it or why but we're using it so that's also very common and it's not a bad thing, it's just how things happen. 4.3s

Easier said than done as we always talk about and no that was awesome. So 1.1s you talk a lot about obviously that cooperation and try to understand 2s with your stakeholders. So how do you handle this is a very hot topic for all procurement. So how do you handle partnership and cooperation with stakeholders continuously, not just in the beginning, but how do you see yourself bring value to them where they say, you know what, Mike, I'm going to partner with you. Because in my mind, both people, both departments want the best for the business. Right? You both work for the same company, have the same goals. 2.9s Obviously there is some friction between the departments just due to different things, time, resource and all of those things. How do you suggest best building partnerships and cooperation with stakeholders?

Very carefully 3.1s say that even though just by my nature and by what I've learned over the years and just how I interact with stakeholders from knowing what's for myself at least proven successful, there's definitely sort of a basic fundamental approach but to truly be. 1.3s The most effective. 1.2s It does vary depending upon not only the stakeholder group, but even on an individual basis for each potential business owner. 1.9s Generally speaking, like, I take a soft approach. I'm not a forceful dominant trying to elbow my way in and have any, you know, this 1.1s focus on or speaking about rules and policy and enforcing compliance because that just automatically has sort of a negative vibe. I'm not trying to put someone in their place or point out what they did wrong or right. Yeah. 1s It's really more about making sure they understand 1.2s that I'm here to help them, that if we do work together, we're always going to end up with a better outcome than if either of it did on our own, even if they're capable. Right. And really like, there are benefits other than just, hey, we have a better outcome, which is obviously the most important, but I'm taking work off their plate so they can spend time doing other things that they probably care about much more. 1.7s I am here for a reason, so I do bring a certain level of expertise that can ultimately help them, this being one little subset, achieve their broader goals individually, personally, within their team, and then ultimately that rolls up for the company. And that's like you said, where we're definitely aligned on those visions and priorities. 1.5s Yeah, and 1.1s yeah, it's well said. I think a lot of procurement also need to have the people skills. And actually, it's quite interesting. I've talked to two procurement managers who used to be in sales, which is even more interesting. They used to be in sales, and so they kind of have that salespeople right. Kind of networking, funding type of skills. And then and somehow they got into procurement, 1.3s and I think it served them well to some degree. So I think that people's skill is maybe just as important, if not even more important than some of the knowledge of certain products. Because I think to some degree, it's impossible to know, to expect one person or a group of people to know every product on earth feature, function, price, like that's. Impossible, right? To be the expert of all of that. Yeah, of course.

But what you have the procurement, the skills of negotiation, the process, the focus 1.3s yeah, that was a kind of great feedback. So as we kind of get to the last question, we started talking about the theme of this series, modern procurement. So obviously, everything you kind of mentioned, I really peck it to it's the way you think it's, the way you approach it, it's combination and correlation of all of that. So what do you think modern procurement should look like in 2023 and beyond? If a company was looking for procurement person or what do you think they should expect? 2.7s

It's kind of a loaded question. I definitely have a lot of thoughts on this, so let me know if we're bumping up against any time issues. 2.5s Okay, great. 1s I unfortunately haven't been able to be in a situation that's allowed me to implement most of these ideas, but I definitely do think it could help him improve the function structure 2s and create better results based on the world of procurement today. So one thought is, 1.4s most teams that are sizable definitely have category focused team members. So to me, having those team members members actually embedded within the team they support versus separately being siloed within, quote unquote, procurement or sourcing, 1.4s I think would be very advantageous, obviously, in an in office environment versus the remote world we are in today that's even. 1.6s More different and important, where the idea is to really forge those relationships and not be sort of in a transactional relationship where they'd be able to gain knowledge on a daily basis, whether it's participating in impromptu stand ups, formal team meetings, going on coffee runs together, 1s the things that you do within your own team. Right? So that's one thing that, from a model of how you are structured, I think could definitely be beneficial as part of that. One of those stakeholders is our own sister team. If you reside within finance, and that's financial planning and analysis. So if you had somebody partnered or embedded with an fpna with an operational focus to understand approved budgets, building project pipelines for your procurement team, developing a calendar with key milestones and really helping the category leads leverage all that information to be proactive in how they manage everything and work with their stakeholders versus waiting for a request to come in sometime 2.1s that gives you the advantage of actually having an opportunity to be strategic and run the process you want to run because you can plan for it in advance accordingly. So

I want to add a quick question and follow up to that real quick, because I love the idea. So I just want to clarify. So what you're saying is, even if you have a let's say it category

manager, he or she is still kind of on the procurement side, or separate teams, whatever you want to call it. And so they're not not as involved, like, they're not on the It team, so they're not able to get into the meetings, and they still see us two different functions. What your idea is, is that It category manager should be part of the It team, basically to initiate themselves into kind of the day to day and all of those things in order to really understand the role, the culture, what they're trying to achieve. That's what you mean. Yeah.

Yes. I love that idea that

it's still be reporting to me with a dotted line maybe. But yeah, really trying to get embedded in that way. And again, if you're in office, that's different in some ways. But now I still have been able to get invited to monthly product meetings or whatever it may be, but that's still not the same. How much? Which am I going to pull from once a month, 45 minutes call? Right. Versus learning more, building the relationships, being ahead of things when they're having meetings, planning, they're developing their rocks and what's it going to take to do them, and building their business cases. All of that usually happens before we hear about it because they want to make sure they're developing the right thing. They get approval from their business case, which is going to require assumptions and data. Right. They're going to go to the market, figure out who the providers are, get pricing to figure out what the required investment will be. Can they get a good return? They're doing all that without us. 1.1s So being part of all of that, I think would be hugely helpful.

Yeah. Love the idea. Love the idea. Anything else you have?

Yeah, 1.6s I know Cyril's team over at BT has this and he's kind of definitely leading the way in terms of cutting edge. I think that if you can ever swing it, having, like, an innovation hub, if you will call it what you want to call it, that's really focused on identifying, exploring, testing, and even rolling out whatever team, technology, 1.4s even if it's going as far as being an early stage design partner with whatever company, early stage or not, to really help inform and shape the solution for the ground up. 1.2s Would be amazing. And it doesn't mean that all these products are supposed to be or should be enterprise wide solutions, but they can still have a big impact for select teams. I mean, think about how things are done now. You have a product for T and E, you have a product for AP Automation. Like you have all these individual products, right, but who's going out typically and identifying them? Usually it's not procurement. 1.3s So we're inheriting 1.8s the start of a relationship after things have already reached a certain point. So if you can actually have a team again, even if it's a person focused on that, that would be amazing. And then of course, if you're actually rolling it out, that they can also have the responsibility of being the product admins and even delivering user training. 1.6s

Yeah, 1.4s obviously we can talk for hours. You have a lot of these amazing ideas. Honestly, what you're talking about is truly that modern approach and because of a lot of reason, a lot of stakeholders don't have resource time focus either. We're on top of everything else they have to do and so it's hard to kind of build that function. But I always thought 2s technology spend or overall, the things that you're talking about, innovation and better way to do things impacts the entire company bottom line, top line productivity. If you buy the wrong software because you didn't go benchmark the market, if you buy the wrong software, wrong solution, it means you have less features and functions for your people to be productive. Right, but not

only that, like how difficult is it to entering the bell? It's really tough to implement something and then actually make a change 1.3s because the impact to have to actually rip the band aid and restart. What if it was a four month implementation? 1.1s Depending upon all the different stakeholders impacted? Usually you're stuck. 1.2s

Exactly. And they don't even know when the contracts come up. So I mean, we've seen customers where they spent 50,000 100,000 on a service, but it took it was so hard to implement. So for like two years they didn't even implement it. I'm like what 5s I know, but no, I mean, this has been a great conversation and we always finished kind of the podcast with one last thing, which is 1.2s with all your experience, personal and business, if you had to give the audience one advice, just one, whether that's a personal advice or a business advice, you decide. But you have to give one advice. What's something that you're really passionate about or believe in? 4s

I actually have a couple of quotes that I keep at my desk. Okay. I don't know that they're necessarily I guess it could be turned into advice. 2s I'll just go with one which is actually 1.3s attributed to the Dalai Lama, which says that 1.6s you've may have heard this, like this isn't some obscure thing. But I guess when he was asked about what surprised him about humanity and It's man surprised me most about humanity because he sacrifices his health to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health, and then he's so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present, the result being that he does not live in the present or the future. He lives as if he's never going to die and then dies having never really lived.

Wow, 2.3s that is deep. 2s

For me what that boils down to for me, which did take a while. It took until I had my kids and I almost burned myself out in a role with the kids being just two and a newborn. Really prioritizing your family and your health and figuring out whatever balance means to you to have everything in those parts of your world good. You can always go get another job or another, whatever it is, fill in the blank. But you only have one life, only have one body. Right. So you got to prioritize taking care of those things.

Yeah, I love that quote. I love the way you kind of resonated with it. And now this has been great. Thank you so much, Mike, for all your time and insights and conversation

Spend Advantage Podcast

Modern Procurement - Michael Leiken

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