The spend may not have changed significantly in recent years – Wilson joined Vodafone 12 years ago – but the manner of the procurement process certainly has . That digital transformation story started around 5 years ago and , like many great developments , was born of frustration .
Wilson is the first to admit he was trying to get data and information which was not as simple then as it may now sound . kind of hard to get . Out to showcase the digital opportunity to his then boss Nick Reed ( now the Group Chief Executive ), Wilson and his team set about digitalising the supplier performance scorecard .
“ From that initial scorecarding , we then worked really hard on some of our P2P processes and digitising all that work and creating scorecards and dashboards in near real time for all of that activity ,” says Wilson . “ So we started around , strategically , how are we doing ? And then we digitised the back and now our focus has shifted to what we call ‘ autonomous sourcing ’, which is going to be the next sort of quantum leap in procurement – procurement that runs itself with almost no human intervention .”
“ You ' ve got to have a digital first mentality – you ' ve got to really think about how you can digitise what we do ”
NINIAN WILSON CEO , VODAFONE PROCUREMENT
44 April 2021