LONDON/HELSINKI –
Sievo, a leading player in spend visibility and procurement financial performance management, hosted more than 80 procurement and finance executives from 60 of the United Kingdom’s largest companies at the end of October to discuss the evolving relationship of the CPO and CFO and the future of the two functions. The half-day event was held at the elegant residence of the Finnish Ambassador to the United Kingdom in Kensington Gardens, London. The purpose of the event was to bring Finance and Procurement executives together in for an intimate afternoon of discourse, thought leadership, and networking.
The event’s keynote address entitled The CFO and the CPO: One World, Two Worldviews was delivered by Andrew Bartolini, Managing Partner & Chief Research Officer at Ardent Partners and focused on the challenges that often exist between procurement and finance departments and strategies to overcome them. “The typical CPO-CFO working relationship remains one of the most difficult and challenging within business today; at the same time it is also one of the most promising,” said Bartolini. “It is incumbent upon the leader of each function to proactively engage the other and bridge the gap that generally exists between their functions.”
In his presentation, The Changing Face of Procurement, Sievo’s CEO, Fabrice Saporito, urged the CPOs and CFOs in the audience to take a much broader view of how procurement’s performance is measured to ensure that future value is created and fully captured and recognized by the larger organization.
“80% of procurement value resides outside procurement” states Saporito. He adds “ensuring that value is captured requires measuring savings but also the drivers of savings to prevent the typical erosion of value that companies see between Powerpoint and income statement and that easily represents 50% of initial estimates”.
Saporito added “Much in the same way the Sievo brought Finance and Procurement leaders together for an exciting afternoon of collaboration and discussion, our Sievo solutions bring the world of enterprise finance and procurement together on a collaborative platform to the benefit of each group. We want to thank the business leaders who joined us this afternoon and Ambassador Pekka Huhtaniemi for welcoming us into his home.”
Saporito and Bartolini’s presentations are available for download at the following link.
Further coverage of the event can be found on Supply Management’s website.
