FEDEX
Sue Spence , Vice President , Global Sourcing & Procurement at FedEx Corporation , on driving the organisation ’ s procurement transformation
Brutally honest . That ’ s a phrase that springs to mind when talking procurement transformation with Sue Spence – Vice President , Global Sourcing & Procurementat FedEx Corporation .
Drafted in by the shipping and transportation giant a little over nine years ago to build a centralised sourcing and procurement operation from scratch , straight-talking Spence wasted little time in making a big impression .
“ One of my favourite phrases is ‘ begin with the end in mind ’,” she says . “ My approach to designing the future state of sourcing and procurement at FedEx was to first define what world-class looked like for our function . We came up with seven characteristics of a bestin-class organisation and then gave ourselves a brutally honest assessment ( red , yellow , green ) on how close or far apart we were from those characteristics . There was a whole lot of red back in 2013 , but by 2018 , it was a whole lot of green .” Let ’ s just put the scale of the task Spence faced into perspective . In fiscal year 2022 , FedEx delivered 3.1 billion packages . That is almost 8.5 million packages per day , delivered globally , by plane , train and truck . Over 550,000 people work for FedEx , literally juggling billions of moving parts , schedules and itineraries . supplychaindigital . com 27