Whether you’re automating tactical processes to focus on the strategic, implementing a new technology tool, or crafting new contract management templates, you need to make sure you have the resources available to you. Discuss:
• What are the criteria and metrics for Best in Class procurement ops organizations?
• The impact of policy vs. relationship
• Implementing systems—funding, justifying, bandwidth, who’s absorbing it, how to get them to use
• How to make it easier for people in your company to buy stuff—is there a UI that’s user friendly?
• Optimizing your mix of tools- eSourcing, P2P, contract management- and consolidating where necessary
• Should operations be centralized globally or regionally?
• Benchmarking your organization against other organizations- how do you stack up?

TABLE 1: Front-End Strategies for Reducing Indirect Costs TABLE 2: 2016: The Year of the Chief Spend Officer, The Evolution of the CPO
Hosted by: Gabe Perez, Vice President, Strategy & Market Development, Coupa Software Inc.

TABLE 3: How Small- and Medium-Spend Companies Can Get Attention from Suppliers
Hosted by: Ken Hartman, Global Procurement Manager, GCP Applied Technologies

TABLE 4: Subcontracting to Third Parties to Meet Stakeholder Requirements
Hosted by: Keion Samuel, Sr. Buyer, RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company

TABLE 5: P2P Optimization
Hosted by: Ermias Hailu, Senior Manager - Indirect Procurement, The Home Depot

TABLE 6: Tail Spend Management
Hosted by: Garry Christie, Director, Procurement, Advanced Micro Devices

TABLE 7: Marketing: How Can The Left Brain Help The Right Brain?
Hosted by: Patrick Fogarty, CEO Americas, Charterhouse

You’ve all seen them. You might even have them. The acronyms after the names of your peers- CPSM, CSCP, etc. Do they still mean anything? Are they worth the cost of certification? Does the curriculum of external training and still offer useful skills to improve your job? Do managers still require certification to get hired? Are they still an indicator of knowledge, or job performance? In this no-holds-barred debate, we will discuss the merits and drawbacks of certification programs offered by associations such as ISM and APICS, university certificate programs, and internal custom coursework. After all, talent development is crucial to developing tomorrow’s leaders, and ensuring they have the right skills to succeed is at the top of the list.