“Procurement can change society for the better”: Procurement Trailblazers Q&A with Ninian Wilson

Ninian Wilson, Vodafone’s Global Supply Chain Director & CEO of Vodafone Procurement Company on how procurement can better society, why buying internally should be as easy as shopping on Amazon, and the key to the software adoption

Our next Q&A is with Vodafone’s Global Supply Chain Director & CEO of Vodafone Procurement Company. TL;DR? Scroll to the bottom.

When you took on your current role in 2016, one of your first objectives was to establish a unique transformation strategy called ‘Our House’. What was the thinking behind this strategy and what were its foundations built on?

I joined Vodafone in 2009 and took up the position of CEO of Procurement Strategy in 2016. At that point, myself and a colleague, Neil Crocker (former Principal Manager, Supply Chain Management Strategy & Governance), were sitting around a table and agreed that we needed a strategy. So we wrote the strategy that afternoon and decided to call it ‘Our House’.

It was originally called ‘Strategy In A Box’. So we had a box, wrote ‘strategy’ on the box and out of that box we took out the individual pieces we needed to build our house. One of the key foundations of that whole strategic piece was around being more digital — having digital forecasts and digitising the whole of the supply chain management function.

‘Our House’ has four keys rooms:

• The Kitchen — where operations run from, owned by the Chief Operating Officer
• The Garage — the innovation centre where small companies that can create value are incubated
• The Games Room — the place to trial new technologies and processes
• The Dining Room — for supply chain management sales where external clients are invited in to check out progress with their procurement activities

It was out-of-the-box thinking: out of that box we built our house and one of the key foundations of our house was around digital. That’s a true story!

Over the past four years, you’ve been focusing on digitisation through the implementation of software, and you’re now a fully digitised team. How has this been transformative? Were there any obstacles you faced?

Our approach as we rolled out new technological capabilities and tools was to embed them into the management process and the way we monitor performance.

The biggest transformational impact has been the ability to visualise performance. Many of my colleagues are super literate with spreadsheets and can spot one number that’s out of kilter; but I’m more visual, so I prefer to see a visualisation of our data, which gives you instant insight.

Visual management has transformed the way we run the business, and the way we talk about performance, and the way we show performance. That’s the biggest step forward.

The challenge of any software implementation is in embedding the change. You can come up with all these wonderful tools but if people don’t use them then all you’ve done is build wonderful tools.

Our approach as we rolled out new technological capabilities and tools was to embed them into the management process and the way we monitor performance. So when I do a review with my boss, we use the tools. When I do my review with my direct reports, I use the tools. When they do their reviews with their direct reports, they use the tools.

At the same time, you’ve got to move away from tools like PowerPoint which aren’t so focussed on the data and instead use tools that reveal the naked truth of where we are with performance and how we improve it.

How do you feel about the consumerisation of software? Do you think this has an impact on adoption of tools?

110%! The expectation from many members of staff is the tools you use in a corporate should be as easy as the ones you use as a private individual. So the consumerisation of tools is really important.

If you don’t agree, think about video conferencing. It used to be reserved for large corporations 5 or 10 years ago but now it’s ubiquitous. It’s become more of a consumer type tool that tries to achieve fantastic user interface and simplicity of use. People just expect it now in corporations.

The question is: why is it not as easy to shop internally as it is on Amazon?

What advice do you have for teams at an earlier stage in their transformation journey when it comes to approaching technology uptake and digitisation of procurement?

There’s a balance between experimentation and learning, and then rolling out enterprise software which takes a lot of time, effort, and dollars. If you’re at different stages of the digitisation journey, teams should practice and learn. Try new things and get feedback not just at the senior level but from the entire organisation, especially those that use the tooling. That input should indicate whether it’s going to work or not.

If the experiment doesn’t work, stop it.

I’m probably as guilty as everyone else of sticking with things for a little bit too long. I should be a bit more focused in stopping things if they’re not working. But it’s quite difficult because you tend to take ownership and it becomes your ‘baby’ and you want it to succeed even if it’s not working.

If the experiment does work, the next step is to decide on a structured implementation.

But remember that if you implement tools that people don’t like, you shouldn’t be surprised if they don’t use it! There’s nothing worse than having to do something because your boss has said so! You’ve got to make sure it adds value to people’s lives and makes their jobs easier. That’s the key to getting people to use tools more quickly.

If you look at our tooling at Vodafone, peak usage is between 8.45am and 9.15am. So people are coming in and checking how they’re doing first thing in the morning over a coffee. This shows that the tool is adding value and giving them insight.

We’ve got some good tooling at Vodafone but you can always improve it and stretch the scope of what you’ve got. We’ve focussed a lot on output (transactions, savings calculation, and working capital etc.) but our next step is to move that tooling up into strategic sourcing like category management and gathering more intelligence.

How has the coronavirus pandemic reinforced or shifted your procurement strategy?

Back in December 2019 one of our key partners in China told us that there was a worrying virus spreading there. We had actually set up a crisis team from the first week in January, even before the first cases of deaths had been announced. So we were ahead of the game.

We’ve also been in the very fortunate position where a lot of our processes were already digital — nearly 90% of our contractors signed online so I was only in the office every 3–4 weeks to sign a couple of contracts from countries that weren’t digital.

As a company, we’ve made the transition [to remote working] quite quickly. Every single person in our supply chain has access to video conferencing, and we moved nearly 100,000 people to online digital working in about 3 to 4 weeks. Our IT teams around the world did a fantastic job in making sure we had enough capacity, and the right tools and capabilities. Covid has reinforced that our digital approach has been the right one. And because we were digitised, we moved pretty seamlessly within the supply chain.

The other thing Covid did was to highlight the topic of supply chain resilience on a broad level through every company. It’s very top of mind, which is a good thing for the supply chain. I’ve been to three Audit and Risk Committee board meetings in the last nine months and there’s a lot more board focus on sourcing strategy:

• Who are you buying from?
• Where do things come from?
• How resilient are you?
• How have you got more than one source of supply?
• Are you buying from more than one country?

You announced a new program called ‘Procurement With A Purpose’ towards the end of 2020. What’s involved in this initiative, and how will it drive transformation?

For me, ‘Procurement With A Purpose’ is tremendously exciting. You either fundamentally believe that procurement can change society for the better or you don’t. I personally believe that with the right mindset, the right companies and the right scale, you can make good change.

We want to be a purpose-led company at Vodafone and we have a three-pillar strategy. The first pillar is around helping society become more digital. The second pillar ensures we’re more diverse and inclusive, and the third is around looking after the planet.

We think these three things should be translated into procurement strategy and reflected down the supply chain. So we are now putting in criteria into our tenders around how diverse and inclusive you are as a supplier, and what you are doing for the planet. That becomes a weighted criteria in our tenders that is also helping us work towards achieving a 50% reduction in our carbon emissions (including supply chain) by 2030, and net 0% by 2040.

TL;DR

• The biggest transformational impact of digitisation has been the ability to visualise performance.
• The challenge of software implementation is embedding the change. The solution is to build tools that people actually like then embed them into management processes like performance monitoring.
• Teams expect corporate tools to be as easy to use as personal ones. That’s why internal buying should be as simple as shopping on Amazon.
• Before rolling out software, teams need to experiment and learn. If feedback (especially from those that use the tools) indicates it won’t work, it’s important to stop early.
• Covid has reinforced the benefits of our digital approach and highlighted the importance of supply chain resilience. In particular, there’s a lot more focus on sourcing strategy.
• You either believe procurement can change society for the better or you don’t. Helping society to digitise, increasing diversity, and protecting the planet should be translated into procurement strategy.

Ninian Wilson, Vodafone’s Global Supply Chain Director & CEO of Vodafone Procurement Company

Ninian joined Vodafone in June 2009 as SCM IT Director, and was appointed to the board of the Vodafone Procurement Company in November 2009. From 2014–2016 Ninian held the role of SCM Technology Director, and was responsible for all Technology sourcing in Vodafone including Networks, IT and new product development. In March 2016 he was appointed as Director of Group SCM and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company.

Prior to joining Vodafone, Ninian held the position of Operations Director for Royal Mail, where he managed the largest workforce in the UK with full accountability for the delivery of its transformation programme. Previously Ninian held senior positions in Cable & Wireless, and was a member of the board of the Caribbean business unit and Trustee of the Pension Scheme.

Ninian is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply and a life member of the Institute of Directors. He lives in Luxembourg with his wife, Philippa.