Rich Sains

The Procurement Conversation Podcast Host | Elevating Procurement | Procurement Leader | 10x Procurement |

My focus is on transforming IT and procurement functions for top enterprises, leveraging over a decade of consulting experience to deliver real, impactful change. The Procurement Conversation podcast, which I host, furthers this mission by sharing insights with a global audience, fostering a community where expertise and trends in procurement are at the forefront.

Our team's approach priorities strategic activities and benchmarks success, ensuring our impact resonates across the businesses we serve. Through Acada's software and advisory services, including transformation and process re-engineering, we are elevating the procurement function to new heights, creating value for stakeholders and suppliers alike.

Founder

We help procurement leaders to solve many of the challenges they face in today's complex environment and manage their teams more effectively and objectively.

Helping companies reduce costs and improve EBITDA

Combining my management, project management and supply chain qualifications along with progressive experience across automotive, medical, biotechnology and capital equipment industries, I have enabled high profitability & EBITDA gains. Most importantly, I have positioned organizations on a competitive edge by building growth-focused supply chains, optimizing operations, sourcing and supplier performance, and cultivating a culture of continuous improvement.

As a commercially astute leader, I developed and managed an agile, robust, risk balanced and highly competitive global sourcing model. My expertise include supplier prospecting & alignment, supplier selection & qualification, supplier audits and performance, contractual negotiations, and risk mitigation/business continuity objectives.

During my career, I:
	Consolidated distribution operations in Europe to 3PL improving customer OTD and reducing overall costs.
	Persuasively and influentially negotiated terms, enabling millions in working capital improvements.
	Strategically planned and implemented regional and global supplier strategies saving direct material costs.
	Operated as a key member of the acquisition’s due diligence team – led diligence on four multi-million dollar acquisitions, including creating sourcing and inventory optimization agendas. Integrated supply chain and sourcing functions.
	Led redeployment of MRP systems for an automotive manufacturing company.
	Corrected poor on‐time delivery performance and excessive lead time, restoring customer trust.
	Achieved historic 60% cycle‐time reductions by leveraging the power of business intelligence (BI) systems.
	Minimized supplier transition time for PPAP parts by >50%.
	Reduced inventory in a 6-month period via innovative supply strategies for the 1st time in organizational history.

Most importantly, I develop and optimize relationships with internal and external stakeholders and partners to optimize global supply chain and procurement results. I also provide governance and oversight to ensure successful demand planning, forecasting responsiveness, and all related global supply chain & procurement functions.

Mary Ruth Williamson

The CPO role is increasingly going to people who've never run a sourcing event in their life.

Talk to executive recruiters. 

More and more, the final candidates for Chief Procurement Officer come from operations, finance, consulting, or supply chain — not procurement. 

They bring executive presence and strategic framing. What they lack in procurement depth, they make up for in organizational navigation.

It's a pattern that is starting to appear more often.

The procurement pipeline has been leaking for years. The people who should be stepping into CPO roles today left the profession a decade ago. They're running startups, leading consulting practices, or sitting in operations roles where their skills were valued more.

What's left is a gap. Plenty of strong tactical professionals, not enough who've been groomed to operate at the executive level. And the ones who could? They never got the exposure, visibility, or seat at the table that would prepare them for the top job.

When CPOs come from outside the function, it sends a message to ambitious procurement professionals: the ceiling is lower than you think.

It also creates a cycle. Fewer procurement-native CPOs means less advocacy at the executive level. Less investment in developing the next generation. 
Which means the next CPO probably won't come from procurement either.

What could companies do differently? Start rotating high-potential procurement people through finance and operations, giving them board exposure, building the executives they'll need rather than hoping they appear.

But that requires treating procurement as a leadership pipeline, not a cost center. Most companies aren't there yet.

So don't be surprised when the next CPO announcement features someone whose background is anything but procurement. 

The profession didn't lose that job overnight. It lost it slowly, one departure at a time.
#Procurement #Leadership

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Rich Sains

Mary Ruth Williamson

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taplio

The Battle

Rich Sains

Mary Ruth Williamson

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Mary Ruth Williamson's LinkedIn Performance

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Performance ScoreMary Ruth Williamson's LinkedIn Performance