Ivalua NOW, Ivalua’s annual marquee event, gathered procurement leaders from leading private and public sector organizations to explore how they are maximizing the use of technology to shift their spend strategies and succeed in today’s challenging and volatile, geopolitical, and environmental markets.
Customer keynotes explored how companies are reinventing their procurement strategies to meet today’s challenges.
“Technology is moving exponentially, and we need to find a better way to bridge technology and business,” Paul DeLaRosa, VP and CPO at Teledyne Technologies. DeLaRosa shared valuable insights into how Teledyne Technologies is “Raising the Bar” by reinventing its approach to procurement, upskilling talent, embracing new technologies, and rethinking supplier relationships with the support of Ivalua.
Desjardins, a leading Canadian financial services cooperative, illustrated how the company has been managing the evolution of procurement to the strategic role it plays today, while Cleveland Clinic showed how the organization has been leveraging effective supplier collaboration.
“As procurement evolves from its historical focus on cost to a more strategic role, it is not just the range of objectives that change. Timing does as well,” said Nadia Malek, Vice President of Procurement and Administrative Services, Desjardins. “Success requires a more proactive approach, with greater analysis and engagement of the business and suppliers.”
Other breakout sessions featuring Whirlpool and CACI International focused on increasing supply chain resilience and procurement agility, while Applied Materials provided valuable insights into how to best manage the supply chain of the future. Public Procurement was also prominent on the agenda as we welcomed guest speakers from the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Leveraging Technology to Stay Agile
Ivalua’s CEO & Founder, David Khuat-Duy, kicked off the event with Ivalua’s vision: “We believe that digital transformation and technology will make supply chains more efficient, more sustainable and more resilient, and unlock the power of supplier collaboration.”
“Everything is moving much faster these days, and to successfully navigate your increasingly complex value chain networks, you need technology-enabled collaboration, both within your organizations and with your suppliers. With the support of technology, procurement is well-positioned to help organizations adapt to today’s uncertain world,” he added.
“To become and stay agile, you need a unified platform that can serve as your backbone for procurement to manage all your spend and all your suppliers with automation, collaboration capabilities and business insights. But it’s a long journey so your platform needs to be flexible to help you in the long term and be prepared for the unexpected. Flexibility is an increasingly critical value in technology.”
Customer-centric Innovation to Increase Efficiency and Build Resiliency
Pascal Bensoussan, Ivalua’s Chief Product Officer (CPO), described the three key pillars on which the Ivalua platform is built to enable organizations to achieve their sustainability goals, and become more efficient and resilient: automation, collaboration, and insights.
Bensoussan outlined Ivalua’s innovation roadmap with a focus on supplier engagement; managing risk and compliance; extending AI-powered collaborative Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM); and delivering an efficient and smarter buying experience.
“Ivalua has built a very strong AI Team to bring further automation and insights to processes,” said Bensoussan. “Moving forward, we want to push AI to be able to help better negotiate with suppliers by redlining suggestions coming from an existing base of contractual clauses that you have already negotiated with the same suppliers”.
In response to increased regulation and reporting requirements, Ivalua has developed an Environment Impact Center to provide companies with actionable insights and the tools to collaborate with suppliers to reduce supply-chain related environmental impact.
“Suppliers can provide their carbon footprint as a key input into their catalog, not just as informational input. We’re using this information to compute the overall carbon footprint of customers’ procurement transactions”.
“When you have to deal with market volatility, it’s all about building resilience through more automation, more process control and more collaboration,” Bensoussan added.
Recognizing Leading Voices in Procurement
Ivalua also recognized customers who made significant strides in the procurement space over the past year. The winners were:
- Procurement Community Team Spirit: Best Advocate – Fannie Mae
- Technology Innovation and Excellence Award – CACI International Inc
- Procurement Trailblazer – Making a Difference – Colorado Judicial Branch
- Best New Deployment – Manulife
Ivalua experts also covered a range of key topics in the solution breakouts including automating invoice processes, managing Scope 3 emissions, accelerating time-to-value contract management, building resilience through supply chain collaboration, and best practices in indirect services procurement.
Stay Ahead of the Game with MTC Podcast, Your Go-To Source for Cutting-Edge Martech Insights, the Latest Martech News, and Expert Updates from Top Business Leaders!