G4S you ' re a higher-margin business , you have the flexibility to think a little longer term .”
He adds : “ But whatever business you work for , as a CPO , you have to be a commercially-focused leader and deliver what the business needs to be successful . And what ‘ successful ’ looks like changes from business to business .
“ I think there ' s more of a pull for procurement in a low-margin business like G4S , and probably the biggest challenge here is you have to work really hard to educate and drive the agenda of the business . You have to give the business what it needs , not what it wants .”
Helping Willescroft and his team give G4S what it needs is a raft of technology-driven changes . Yet , underpinning this multilayered transformation process is something that has nothing whatsoever to do with tech : rock-solid values .
Improvement only works if there are solid foundations “ Before you try and improve things , you ' ve got to strengthen the foundations ,” he says . “ By that , I mean strengthening the procurement community network by evolving the controls we have in place and making sure we ' re delivering sustainable , measurable savings across the business . These are the building blocks .”
On top of this G4S is driving change through data insights and KPI dashboards to give it visibility , both of its internal controls and its supply chain . supplychaindigital . com 71