Ahead of the marcus evans Chief Procurement Officer Summit 2022, read here an interview with Ward Karson discussing strategies for CPOs to succeed on the digital procurement journey.

1. the activity of going out to market can
lead to cost compression, as the supplier
will investigate their own options to
protect their revenue, even if it means
taking a reduction. And never forget to
ask your internal stakeholders if they have
an upcoming purchase requirement which
can be brought as net-new revenue to the
supplier, so when you request financial
concessions on the baseline business run
rate, you can present offsetting new
revenue opportunity for your supplier to
fight for. If I’m a Sales Rep, I would know
it is a whole lot easier to find USD
100,000 of revenue elsewhere, than it is
to find USD 1 million of revenue else-
where.
Raindrop was designed by Procure-
ment professionals. What additional
benefits does that bring on board?
Raindrop is designed by Procurement and
Operations subject matter experts, with
decades of hands-on leadership experi-
ence. This provides the critical ability to
authentically speak with any CPO, CFO,
CIO, or other client resources. Unlike
some of our competitors, Raindrop is not a
group of engineers trying to find a
problem to solve in order to sell enterprise
software via a host of industry-specific
inexperienced rapid turnover Sales reps
who have never worked as a Procurement
practitioner before.
Raindrop is not heavily burdened with the
“technical debt” most of the legacy
software providers are. This means,
Raindrop is an ‘industry disrupter’ as we
shake up an industry in desperate need of
change. We leveraged our decades of
hands-on real-life Procurement experi-
ence, and created the newest technology
solution, incorporating Artificial Intelli-
gence and Machine Learning, all in an
easy-to-use and highly flexible platform.
Leveraging and/or acquiring modern
single-pane-of-glass Enterprise Spend
Management technology would provide
organizations rapid and rich access to
actionable intelligence – technology their
internal stakeholders and suppliers can
easily navigate and therefore successfully
capture spend.
So when a real Procurement practitioner
uses Raindrop, they instantly see Raindrop
was built with the same ‘lingua franca’
they speak. The Procurement industry is a
very tight knit group of career practition-
ers in a rapidly shrinking world, and
Raindrop’s authenticity and deep experi-
ence speaks volumes.
Procurement’s main
function is not the
actual sourcing of
goods and services
itself. It’s being a
consultative advisor.
How CPOs Should Navigate the
Digital Procurement Journey
Interview with: Ward Karson, Chief
Operating Officer, Raindrop
“Step outside Procurement’s traditional
comfort zone and corporate role. See
Procurement as a revenue support
function and hold your teams to deliver on
their savings numbers. Always plan first,
and act second. And never forget,
Procurement’s number one job is to
provide consultative guidance, both
externally to suppliers, and equally
internally to your stakeholders,” advises
Ward Karson, Chief Operating Officer,
Raindrop.
Raindrop is a service provider at the
marcus evans Chief Procurement
Officer Summit 2022.
What procurement digitization
challenges are CPOs experiencing
today? What would address those
issues?
Procurement leaders understand the
urgency and importance of defining and
executing their organization’s digital
transformation. The top goals for digitiza-
tion projects include process automation,
reporting data quality, cost savings, and
streamlined compliance. While many
corporate functions are reducing their cost
of acquiring goods and services by
implementing new digital solutions,
Procurement is generally not one of them.
Procurement departments will have to
grow more efficiently and create more
value for the company. CPOs need to build
new capabilities and create a digitally-
enabled ecosystem.
Historically this has been achieved via
numerous and various “best of breed”
technology point solutions, which ulti-
mately CPOs have realized leads to data
leakage, spend leakage, and risk/
compliance leakage. This last item is the
procurement digitization challenge which
keeps CPOs awake at night.
How should CPOs embark on the
digital procurement journey? How can
they ensure it’s successful?
The old saying, “measure twice, cut once”
also pertains to CPOs ensuring they
understand what issue they are trying to
solve. In order for the technology itself to
have the greatest chance of success, the
CPO (and numerous other key internal
stakeholders) must have a defined set of
requirements they cumulatively seek to
solve for. Of course, scope creep is a real
thing, so ensure your scope is tightly
understood and agreed upon. CPOs should
keep in the forefront of their minds, that
they may not necessarily need to ‘boil the
ocean’, but rather can understand and
address the holistic criteria and pain
points, and solve one issue at a time, or
as funds are available. For example, if a
CPO only has funding to solve for ‘spend
registration’ and Supplier Management
platform, but will require a cohesive series
of future modules to address Sourcing and
Contracts several quarters out, then
working with the desired technology
partner to get creative in solving the
CPO’s needs is a core aspect of their
digital procurement journey.
What gaps are even some of the top
CPOs not covering, that impact their
competitive advantage?
This is going to be a radical idea, but one
whose time has arrived. As a Procurement
leader and practitioner for the past 30
years, I always felt the Procurement
function should be measured similarly to
how the Sales function is measured.
Effectively the CPO sits on the opposite
side of the supplier CSO’s desk, and vice
versa. So I think we need to start looking
at Procurement as a revenue function, and
not as the external spend team that is all-
too-frequently perceived as the depart-
ment to ‘just help us buy things’ to get
our jobs done. CPOs should take a serious
look at creating a well-thought-out
supplier and commodity strategic plan in
collaboration with each of their internal
executive stakeholder partners, and
leverage Procurement as a revenue
support function.
On top of this, it should be understood
that Procurement’s main function is not
the actual sourcing of goods and services
itself. Essentially, the sourcing event is
the outcome of good consultative planning
in partnership with stakeholders. The real
question is, are CPOs holding their teams
to design efficiencies into each functional
group’s external spend for each forthcom-
ing fiscal year. If this is happening
properly, then each Procurement resource
would ‘have a savings number’ to meet
each fiscal year, just like a Sales Repre-
sentative has to meet each quarter. And
also like Sales, if the Procurement team
member ‘hits their number’ each quarter
or fiscal year, then they also receive a
predetermined and agreed upon financial
bonus. This would create a competitive
advantage within and outside of the
organization.
How can CPOs reduce operational
costs and deliver quantifiable value
back to the business?
The hunt for OpEx cost reduction is the
ruler which all CPOs are measured by. If
I’m spending a dollar today, how can you
help me only spend eighty cents tomor-
row? The answer to this question can be
broad, so we will use one example here.
There is no written rule that supplier
contracts cannot be renegotiated during
the active term. You do not have to wait
toward the end of a three-year contract in
order to engage the supplier and renegoti-
ate it. Be bold – take active business out
to market – even if you never plan on
switching out the incumbent supplier. Just

2. About Raindrop
Raindrop is an enterprise spend management platform built to deliver cost savings and cost containment for customers while
reducing their buy-side compliance and risk. Raindrop powers enterprises to fulfill the buy-aspect of their business processes, in
the areas of Planning, Supplier Relationship Management, Sourcing, Contracts, and Payables, while providing rich and powerful
analytics and insights. Embark on a true enterprise spend management digitization journey with Raindrop, leading to better
business strategies and returns on your investments.
www.raindrop.com
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About the Chief Procurement Officer Summit 2022
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bringing leading senior procurement executives and innovative suppliers and
solution providers together. The Summit’s content is aligned with key procurement
challenges and interests, relevant market developments, and practical and
progressive ideas and strategies adopted by successful pioneers.
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