 Hey guys and gals, welcome back to Las Vegas. Lisa Martin here at Koopa Inspire 2022 with about 2,500 folks, very excited to be back in person. I can assure you that is the vibe that is here. Toby, you joined me next, the managing director at KPMG. Toby, it's great to have you on the program. Yeah, thanks, it's great to be here. Isn't it great to be back? It's finally in person, it's great. I know, I know, it feels so normal when we were talking before we went live that it feels normal. It does, it does, and it feels great. It does. You're a great kickoff with Rob and Barbara. Isn't that fantastic? Rob Bernstein has, and Barbara Corcoran. Rob has probably the highest energy of a CEO that I've ever gotten to work with. So you always know you're in for a good high energy conversation with Barbara Corcoran coming in. John Taffer with Bar Rescue is, it's been a great morning so far. So you, let's talk about you. You specialize in digital transformation within the procurement and the contract management spaces. Talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I love helping folks to reimagine their operating models to solve today's challenges. And there are so many challenges coming out in this post COVID world that many of our clients are dealing with. And I'm never short on phone calls and, you know, from my clients reaching out for help to really figure out how to retool and really help themselves to transform to be able to address the changes to come. I heard a really smart description of the last two years today. Compressed transformation. We've been talking about digital transformation for years and then we've also been talking about its acceleration during the COVID era. But compressed transformation, I thought that's probably something that's here to stay. Nobody's going to want access to older, less data slower. Yep. They're just not. 100% agree. What are some of the trends that you've observed in your role in the last couple of years? Yeah, I absolutely believe that folks that took advantage of that digital transformation pre-pandemic have actually been able to fare much better than those that have held off on those investments. For whatever reasons, you know, there are always different priorities but those that have actually gotten that journey started pre-pandemic have definitely fared very well. I think the trends that I'm seeing today, the CPO's challenge, and there are many challenges, but, you know, coming out of the post COVID era, you are now recovering and ramping up production and as a result, your buying activity is increasing. Right. And other than increasing activity, there's also the changing of requirements. So, you know, the folks in the front office are looking at new technologies to innovate new products and services and that's going to change what the mix of the skills and resources that you need in the back office. In addition to that, there are other requirements like ESG. And so as you're thinking about retooling and being able to buy more sustainably or drive diversity with the spend that you have, that's also changing the skill mix that you have. And I think on top of that, the skills and the talent, we are dealing with the unfortunate situation that many companies are with the great resignation, where the talent has quickly exited the workforce and with the demand increasing and changing that puts everyone in a tough spot. And so those are really the big challenges that I've seen with the clients most recently as we're coming out of COVID. Have your customer conversations escalated up the C-suite? You mentioned the Chief Procurement Officer, if we think of every company these days has to be a data company to be successful, if they're not, they're probably not going to be around. Are you noticing that from a supply chain perspective within procurement and contract management, is that escalating up the C-suite to be much more of a C-suite or board level initiative? Absolutely, absolutely. I think what folks have realized in many of their, even the earlier digital transformation efforts, it was very geared around automating and streamlining transactions and processes. Not so much putting data at the core. Yes, you would get intelligence out of that, but we had architected your entire organization around data and good quality data. And what is needed to be able to actually translate that data to meaningful insights to make the decisions or drive visibility into your supply chain. So you think about things such as ESG where you really need to know your tier one, tier two, tier three suppliers and all the impacts that that has in order to drive to those ESG objectives that you're telling your investors, you're telling your customers and you're telling your employees about. It's very important, you have to be centered around data and be able to be able to see your entire supply chain. And if you weren't architected to do so, doing it as an afterthought is very costly because you've already made those investments. Very costly. And also, I mean, from a business perspective, I think we talk so often Toby and you probably do as well about IT business alignment. It's one of those, it's like digital transformation. It's almost a buzzword, if you will, but it's critical because I'm seeing a lot of data and research from folks like Gartner that are showing that massive percentages of businesses believe that the technology is really the driver and the fuel of the business going forward. So no longer can IT and lines of business be separated. Yeah, I totally agree. I actually think that when I mentioned about new skills, if you think about the next generation and the new operating models, you know, the new folks coming out of college have to have that skill set because process and technology are completely linked. And I think that the organizations of the future and the most successful ones will know how to actually be more human-centric and be able to harness the data through the technologies to actually allow you and I to do what we do best, which is collaborate, negotiate deals, work on our relationship versus focused on the technology or entering data into forms and all the administrative components that many of my clients are plagued with today. Collaboration, I think, has maybe become even more important in the last two years that we've been so limited about how to collaborate. Thankfully, we have a lot of technologies to do that. But when I think of Koopa, collaboration, community are two words that jump out. Talk to me a little bit about, from a partnership perspective, alignment there with the collaborative spirit at KPMG. Yeah, absolutely. For us, I recently just presented on a very similar topic that nothing great in business is done by a single person and it takes partners to be able to drive the innovation needed to solve the new challenges of tomorrow. And I see our relationship with that. They offer a platform, they offer a method to get access to the data and simplify it in a way for our clients so that they can focus on the relationships and driving the collaboration with their suppliers. And I think that that's the thought leadership in partnership with them that we'd like to bring to the table. Speaking of alignment between KPMG and Koopa, talk to me a little bit about ESG as sort of a new initiative within KPMG. Talk to me a little bit about that and what some of the high level objectives are. Absolutely. I wouldn't say that it's new. I think it's always been there and there's always been a focus. But I think the recent events and with the regulatory environment changing as well and as with consumers, consumer behavior driving and then the investor community driving towards ESG, I think that is quickly changing how companies are prioritizing that within the amongst everything else that they have. And as a result, I think the CPO's role in that equation is ever so important when it comes to delivering and operationalizing ESG. I imagine the CPO's role must be a lot more strategic these days as they really have to be kind of a transformation change agent. Yeah, and actually in most cases, the CPO is perfect for that because that's been their role in many cases before. And I think yet this is just yet another dimension that they have to attack and incorporate into the process of selecting the right partner or the right supplier with who they want to onboard or for the company. Got it, okay. Let's talk about advice now for companies that are either in the early stages of the supply chain transformation, really digitizing, how do they get started? Is it too late for some? No, I don't think it's ever too late. Yeah, I don't think, I think I don't think it's too late. You know, and especially with a very big focus on digital and tech these days, sometimes being late to the game allows folks to actually work out the kinks for the bleeding edge technologies and so that makes it even less risky for them to adopt in many cases that's what we've seen. But you know, I think the advice is get educated, really just understand as much as you can around what other people are doing, are there other peer group companies like themselves that are actually going through the transformation or have gone before and just kind of understand what were the drivers of that strategy and what were the outcomes that you can learn from them, get help from externals and whether they be technology partners, consultants and actually hiring new skills and bringing in new perspectives to help you to own and drive that strategy important. This is super important and you can't outsource these things, right? This needs to come from within, especially when you think about things as purposeful and impactful as ESG. Those cannot be outsourced. And I think those would be kind of the two key things. But I also also say, take an outward in approach as you're thinking about your new strategy. Focus on what your employees are saying about your supply chain and how easy it is to actually understand and work within your supply chain. Talk to your suppliers, talk to your internal business partners to really reflect and understand how do you make this process as easy as possible for them to comply with? I think one of the things I was reading in preparation for coming here is that some survey that Cooper did of about 800 decision makers. And one of the things that was overwhelming as a theme is that a lot of organizations don't feel that they have the right data visibility to drive an ESG strategic initiative. So what Cooper does, providing that visibility and the ability to collaborate and share across the community is, seems to be something that's going to be a business critical must have going forward. Yeah, 100%. You know, many of our clients operate under, you know, not under like mandates or compliance driven kind of policies. In the commercial world, in many cases you have to influence the buying behavior. And so you can't do that without data. I'd like to think in this day and age, presented with the right supplier options with the at the right point in time, you were able to influence and drive the spend to diverse candidates, sustainable options. You know, and there's not just savings, not just the lowest cost option, but there's so many other things to consider in this day and age. And I think that's where it's so important to be able to have a platform like Cooper to be able to gather that data, acquire external sources of data, such as ESG related data and make that available to all parties and be that source of truth so that you can drive the behavior. That source of truth and also even something that was talked about this morning during the keynote is accountability. And I've heard John Taffer from Bar Rescue talking this morning, but he was talking about in 120 bar rescues, he goes, I've never met one person that has admitted from day one of the four days they shoot that I'm responsible for the reason that my business is not successful. He goes, everybody has an excuse. There's no accountability until you really force someone to take probably that hard look in the mirror that they don't want to take. But that accountability within organizations, within an overall business is critical. Yeah, I think I absolutely believe that when a way to solve that is providing the data and making it available and really once again, I think it goes back to driving that behavior that you want. And I think it starts with leadership and I think the accountability of leadership and to be able to drive that type of culture within your organization, but absolutely you need data to be able to do that and be able to monitor that as well as a leader to make sure that that accountability is appropriately distributed across the organization. One of the things I mean, I think patience has been in short supply the last two years, I think we've learned that. I think also that another thing we've learned is that access to real time data is no longer, oh, that would be great. You've got to have that for your business to be differentiated, because if we think about the consumer side, the consumers are so vocal on things like social media if the experience isn't tailored, personalized and instantaneous. Oh yeah. We have a very short, Rob talked about the very short attention span that his kids have, I'm like three minutes, we don't even have that in business or on the consumer side, I don't think. Yeah, I see that in my kids and what he said today was spot on. So when I think about my career and where I'm at and he said the same thing, I mean our kids are coming into the, they'll be in procurement organizations very soon, sooner than I'd like to admit. Yeah. And as a result, I think that we talked a bit about talent shortage and the challenge with keeping talent. And I think that what you had just expressed is very important, is that that experience for the employee, that you come into a workforce and they expect you to have these quick turnarounds, but if you offer them tools that require spreadsheets and old archaic systems to be able to solve today's challenges, I think that you're not going to be able to retain your talent very long. Right, that's a great point. That's an absolutely fantastic point. Last question for you before we wrap here is, so the changes that organizations need to make with respect to being prepared for ESG reporting requirements that are coming down the pike, obviously having a data strategy has got to be one of those. Yeah, absolutely. I think many procurement organizations were really geared around savings in a very compliance driven manner. And when you think about ESG, I think you got to be very data driven. And so that should be a priority focus of how do you retool yourself to be able to acquire mass amounts of data, figuring out where you need to go to get that data, whether they be third parties, whether they be directly from the supplier and be able to aggregate it and provide the insight into those reporting standards that are required. And then to be able to actually measure progress along those sustainability or diversity goals that might be established at the leadership level. So I think it's coming down the pike, it's a matter of time. I think it's something that I've been waiting for to see and it's interesting to see how quickly that it's come down. But I think with the regulatory compliance coming down, this is going to be moving very quick and people need to get ready. That's good, they need to be ready. Excellent. Toby, thank you for joining me on the program today, talking about what you were doing at KPMG, what it's doing with COPA and how organizations really should be thinking about an approaching supply chain digital transformation. We appreciate your insights. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. All right. For Toby, you, I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE in Las Vegas at COPA Inspire 2022. Stick around, my next guest will join me shortly.