“Driving diversity and inclusion through the supply chain”: Procurement Trailblazers Q&A with Stephen Day

Stephen Day, Chief Procurement Officer at Kantar, discusses the consumerisation of enterprise technology, the challenge of productising services, and how the supply chain can drive diversity and inclusion

In our second Q&A of the series, we talk with Stephen Day, Chief Procurement Officer at Kantar. TL;DR? Scroll to the bottom.

You took up the role of CPO at Kantar at the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in April 2020. What was that process like?

I was approached by Bain to take part in their recruitment process and was then offered the role of CPO at Kantar. I accepted it in March 2020 and then a few days later, the government announced the first lockdown.

I started in April and the on-boarding process was all virtual. For the next six months, everything was done remotely from my home in Woking. That was hard yards — the hardest thing I’ve done in my career, that’s for sure!

As restrictions eased, I did start popping into the London office a couple of times a week, and it has really helped to be able to have a change of scene and the headspace that comes from that commute.

Prior to Kantar, you worked in telecoms and publishing. Are there any similarities between these diverse industries so far as transformation is concerned?

Yes, there are similarities between the areas of telecoms, publishing and market research industries that I was working in. They’ve all experienced huge digital transformation throughout my career.

Firstly, telecoms. The birth of the telecoms industry in the mid-1990s revolved around the emergence of mobile phones and the 2G network. That was all predicated on “voice” — the revolutionary idea that we would talk to each other on mobile phones. Nowadays though, we predominantly use our phones to communicate via apps instead of “voice” through phone calls. So there’s been a shift from analog to a digital model.

There was a similar transition from analog to digital in publishing. Where I worked at Pearson, the company model was focussed on the sale of heavy and expensive educational textbooks. But the arrival of Amazon’s rental model meant that students could start renting their university textbooks for a fraction of the cost.

In response, Pearson shifted towards a digital model with a series of applications and services. What’s interesting is that there’s a lot of evidence that students still want physical content to augment their on-screen learning. So perhaps the evolution will eventually be towards a hybrid analog and digital model in publishing.

This same move from analog to digital is also occurring at Kantar. Historically, large parts of the market research business involved reaching out to people on the street with questions to gather data. A very analog model. What we’re moving towards now is a digital model where we screen various data feeds to understand how consumers express their preferences and present these as digital insight.

In all three models — telecoms, publishing, and research/analytics — there’s a shift from buying on an ad hoc basis to buying through subscription services.

For example, at Kantar, we’re encouraging brands to opt-in for a steady stream of insight that delivers research and data throughout the year on a subscription, instead of commissioning ad hoc research. By and large, businesses that drive their revenue through subscription-based pricing models tend to have a higher multiple than those charging ad hoc services.

Where is Kantar in terms of its procurement transformation and what are your top priorities as CPO moving forward?

When Bain bought a 60% majority stake in Kantar from WPP just after I joined, one of their main interests was to improve the procurement function, which hadn’t been strongly leveraged to date. When I came on board, I was joining a procurement organisation of just two people with a third-party procurement spend of £1.4 billion.

The aim now is to grow that team while investing heavily in technology to improve the procurement cycle experience and also engaging with the business to develop their strategic plans.

Most importantly for me though, we’re concentrating on how we use our supply chains to drive the diversity and inclusion agenda. Our capacity to achieve this through the supply chain is profound but we need to ensure that the supply chain we use to deliver our products and services aligns with Kantar’s business values.

We source a huge range of services from freelancers, research companies and the like. Now the focus will be on assessing our suppliers in line with our values around diversity and inclusion as part of the tender process. These will underpin our hiring process and the way we build the procurement team, too.

We’re also thinking about how we can create access to opportunity for local communities through outreach programmes like modern apprenticeships. There are plenty of challenges but it’s something I feel very strongly about addressing in my role as CPO.

You mentioned investing heavily in technology. What are the key features you look for in procurement technology?

The establishment of procurement is often focussed on what you’re going to save, so of course we have to consider the cost savings and return on investment when we’re adopting technology. Because we handle such vast amounts of data, business assurance, security, and risk protection are also big components in the decision-making process when it comes to investing in the processes and technology we use.

Ease of use is another priority. At the moment, we’re seeing a big trend in the consumerisation of enterprise technology. Most people these days expect their company tools to be substantively representative of the technology they use to run their lives — Instagram, Facebook, Netflix, eBay.

In my view, the companies that will succeed in the procurement space are those that have intuitive, easy-to-use interfaces. This is important for us because my team won’t adopt our tools if I present them with clunky interfaces that require a mathematics degree to use them.

To help us move in this direction we’re in talks with a couple of big providers of ERP and P2P systems to see if we can layer them on top of our existing system.

Where do the biggest opportunities and challenges lie in procurement transformation for Kantar this year?

Productising services is going to be the biggest challenge, particularly as we implement a catalog-based buying solution (like Coupa) which includes guided buying. Having said that, it’s also the biggest opportunity to unlock value for Kantar as we’ll be able to create huge savings.

A number of the services we buy are “repeatable” services that are currently bought in a haphazard way. If they’re repeatable, it means we can put them into a catalogue as a service-based product. So now we’re looking to draw out that data and figure out exactly how to productise those service-led processes.

TL;DR

• There’s been a shift from the analog to the digital in every industry I’ve worked in
• My priorities — Invest heavily in technology, grow the procurement team, and drive the diversity and inclusion agenda through the supply chain
• Key features I look for in procurement tech: return on investment; security and risk protection; and ease of use
• We’re seeing a big trend in the consumerisation of enterprise technology, so companies need intuitive tech tools to succeed
• Productising services is the biggest opportunity and challenge in unlocking value and creating savings

Stephen Day, Chief Procurement Officer at Kantar

Stephen is an accomplished International Executive, with expertise in Operations management. He specialises in Supply Chain, Purchasing, Multi-Country Transformation, and Change, having led a number of operational transformations and new business model developments to support enterprise-wide evolution from products to services and software revenue models.

His experience with the implementation of innovative approaches to existing business models has allowed him to create new growth opportunities and service improvements, all through the power of the supply chain.