Lee joined the MPS in November 2010 from the Department of Work and Pensions where he was Director of Commercial Strategy. Prior to this he held global roles in Barclays Bank and Williams PLC. His earlier career was spent in aerospace, manufacturing and engineering companies. He is a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply and he is the newly appointed Association of Chief Police Officers lead for Procurement.

Key project you are currently working on:
Olympics, Total Policing and Reducing Costs

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Cost Pressures, Olympic legacy and Supporting front line officers

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Working with stakeholders

Jeff has extensive experience in building and deploying enterprise solutions for global organisations. Jeff has spent more than 15 years within the technology market, holding senior positions with J.D.Edwards, PeopleSoft, Oracle, FileNet, IBM as well as helping to grow a start-up within the Microsoft Dynamics channel. Technology solution experience spans ERP, e-Procurement, Content Management, Document Management, Business Process Management, Business Intelligence, Data Warehousing and the SaaS marketplace.

Having lived and worked in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe and The United States, Jeff has a deep understanding of the complex multi-national environments within which global organizations need to deploy solutions to their business requirements.

Jeff has a degree from Loughborough University and an MBA from London Business School.

Formerly at Cable & Wireless, Jim now manages Procurement Operations for Network Rail. This includes managing their Procurement Service Centre, as well as the processes, systems and tools Network Rail uses in achieving best-value for its £5bn annual spend. His remit extends to enablement projects, reporting, policy, and staff capability improvement

Rob is the Head of Programme for Tarmac’s procurement group. His primary role is to provide governance over the management, development and operation of Tarmac’s successful procurement programme and has direct responsibility for supplier performance management, supply chain accreditation, analytics and purchase to pay. He has a specialism in commodity and energy procurement and has held senior sourcing roles leading both direct and indirect sourcing with Tarmac since joining the company in 2006.

Prior to Tarmac, Rob was a European Purchasing Manager in PepsiCo International’s indirects procurement group and has also held management roles in operations within the food industry.

Rob is married, has 2 daughters and is a keen skier and runner.

Lance is the EMEA Services CFO, and EMEA Services Regional Office General Manager, based in London. Since joining Goldman Sachs in 2009 Lance has also helped lead the establishment of the firmwide Vendor Management Office, co-led the Global Procurement and Commercial Management team and currently is a member of the firmwide EMEA Vendor Management Steering Group and Services Vendor Risk Council.

Prior to joining Goldman Sachs Lance held a number of Global and EMEA leadership roles ranging from a number of global procurement and vendor management transformations at Footsie 100 Financial, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing and Telecoms teams to the leadership of EMEA consulting teams. Lance holds a first class honours degree in Business & Engineering.

Michael McNulty is Senior Vice President with responsibility for Global Procurement within the LEGO Group which is a division of the family-owned and privately-held LEGO Group, one of the world’s largest toy companies, based in Billund, Denmark.

Michael McNulty joined LEGO in 2007 as head of their newly established Manufacturing Facility in Kladno in the Czech Republic. Two years later Michael moved to the role of Vice President of Global Procurement and in 2012 he was promoted to Senior Vice President. Michael became a member of Corporate Management in January 2012 and sits on the Board of Directors of LEGO Production s. r. o. based in Kladno Czech Republic.

Michael McNulty has a background in both the Electronics Manufacturing Industry and the Logistics Industry where he worked around the world with both Benchmark Electronics and Flextronics before he joined LEGO.

Michael was born in Ireland and resides in Prague, Czech Republic with his wife Susan. Together they have two children a boy and a girl Stephen and Kate and a granddaughter Emily.

Kees Gerretse started his career in the Royal Navy and Royal Marines.

After 13 years service, Kees took up a position in the private sector working for Total oil & gas company.

In 1997 Kees joined former Hoogovens and held various directorships across the Company in Logistics and Transport, Commercial and Business Development, and Research and Development.
Kees was appointed Group Director Supplies and Transport for former Corus, in 2005 and was responsible for purchasing, including transport across the Corus Company.

Since 2008 Kees implemented the integration of the purchasing function and synergies within the Tata Steel Group and Corus and appointing/managing the lead buyers of the main categories across the Tata Steel group. This led to his appointment in October 2009 to Group Director Procurement for the total Tata Steel Group with an annual budget of $18billion.

He has an MBA and an Executive MBA qualification in Strategy and Business Development.

Key project(s) you are currently working on:
• SRM is the vehicle on which key supply chain projects are running, it includes end-users engagement, TCO projects with suppliers, functional excellence
• An important project is working capital of raw material. Improve supply chain and different specifications/blends

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Challenges are re-sourcing and working of cross-functional CI teams

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Close cooperation/engagement with end-users, key suppliers working in prioritized projects is key

Since finishing full time education I have occupied various commercial roles, and have worked in most major industry sectors and most Procurement categories. As a performer I am used to owning the customer journey through highly complex and impactful strategy /selection / contracting processes, and have led numerous transformational business change programs.
I am also an experienced manager and Procurement leader within the business, that is used to leveraging executive relationships to identify and deliver supply based business innovations.

Key project you are currently working on:
All related to the refresh of BPO agreements originally implemented during our business transformation program in 2007.

What you foresee being your key challenge in 2012:
The enablement of innovation i.e. how do we harness the power of the supply chain to drive incremental value for our customers?

How you are overcoming this:
• Creating an environment to harvest external insights.
• Use of external insights to create a positive disruption of our internal status quo.
• Re-energising our engagement model with internal stakeholders to create an even more proactive relationship.
• Rolling out an "education program" to our internal stakeholders to provide process knowledge, practical competencies such as negotiating skills, and external awareness.

Heather Rodgers is the Chief Procurement Officer for Centrica and has responsibility for the overview of procurement spend across the group reporting to the Board. This includes setting strategy and policy with the focus on group level activity, risk management and effective governance .She runs several centres of excellence, including a virtual contract management community across the company for all key contracts ( including a large off shore portfolio) and major change programmes to ensure end to end contract and supplier management and global sourcing strategies.

Heather is a non executive board member of National Outsourcing Association, has passed the Diploma for Institute of Directors, a Fellow of the International Association of Contract and Commercial Management, a member of CIPS Leadership Network and a member of the Institute of Personnel Management and has a degree in History from Birmingham University.

Key project you are currently working on:
Overviewing Procurement transformation in time of change in Centrica for 10bn spend. Focus for 2012 is indirect spend drive for review, Talent Boards development of high potential performers, development of M and A strategic sourcing best practice and SRM roll out. Balance of growth agenda and costs efficiencies in business units.

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Build next generation of leaders to achieve high performing agenda, creatively challenging notions of value, seeing change coming and options ready on the table for ways forward and risk management being driven down the supply chain beyond immediate partners

How you are overcoming the challenges:
Overcoming by developing risk management processes and working with partners for transparency and involved in Group Risk Executive Committees for discussions early. Budget – kept money aside for development of people and attracting talent from graduates, other departments and external.

Dennis Bauer started his career in the technology industry where he grew to hold numerous senior management positions at companies ranging from venture capital funded start-ups to ERP provider Lawson Software. He has worked in the procurement and payments industry since the late 1990’s when he joined Ariba, Inc where he managed the team responsible for industry marketplaces. He was also the Vice President in charge of Global Sales at Xign, Inc we he led growth through customer acquisition that led to the company being acquired by JP Morgan Chase. Following the acquisition, Dennis joined the Commercial Card business at American Express where he had responsibility for strategy and go to market activities for their B2B solutions where he became known as an industry spokesperson and product strategist in the rapidly expanding commercial payments market.
Currently, Dennis is the Managing Director for Barclaycard Global Commercial Payments where he is responsible for one of the largest commercial payment businesses in Europe.

A husband and father to twin daughters, Dennis is also a keen sports fan and a lifelong Dallas Cowboys supporter. His other interests include skiing, golf, travel and sprint triathlons.

David is a qualified procurement and supply chain professional (MCIPS) having worked in the industry for over 18 years.

Before joining Charterhouse in 2006, David was at Renault Nissan for 6 years where he held category positions for marketing, advertising and media before becoming the head of purchasing. Prior to that David spent 9 years in the public sector in a number of purchasing roles for Network Rail and then the Lord Chancellor’s Department. As business development director at Charterhouse David is responsible for developing marketing production streams for a European-wide client base.

Serge Bacchus career highlights: Serge has 15-year-experience in implementing European contracts in Facilities services. He is highly skilled in standardisation of processes across a large scope of countries. Since May 2011, Serge is deputy General Secretary of the French Association of Travel Managers (AFTM)

Yannick has 20-year experience in outsourcing activities. He was international sales director in several groups of the HR and IT sector where he has developed strategic business and offering with key accounts. Since March 2009, he has brought to VINCI Facilities his strong expertise in negotiation of complex International and domestic transactions and contracts. Yannick is member of the real estate organisation "CoreNet Global

Joseph Loiselle is the Group Vice President of IDC's Global IT and Financial Advisory Services, a dynamic series of products and services focused on specific corporate IT and investment community needs. The services include IDC's Global IT Advisory Tools, Global IT Advisor, IDC's IT Executive Programs, Investment Research Services, IDC's Private Vendor Watch & IT M&A services and jointly manages elements of IDC's IT Executive Programs. Mr. Loiselle has been a pioneer in customizing and creating IDC research for the IT professionals market, specializing in sourcing, procurement and acquisition, price benchmarking, deal analysis, asset disposition and financing, and consulting. Additionally, he coordinates and creates research and services for IDC's management consulting, Wall Street clients for sell-side, investment banking and private equity audiences.

Tom has worked in procurement and consultancy for 20 years and managed a range of procurement categories. In the last five years Tom has concentrated in managing major outsourcing deals for Orange and T Mobile covering FAO, HRO, ITO (data centres), Call Centres and currently developing a number of initiatives covering Procurement, Legal and Knowledge Outsourcing.

Tom firmly believes that outsourcing brings with it risks and rewards and no project should be started without a make v buy analysis. This analysis should lead to an agreement on what outsourcing means to the organisation and what the major drivers mean to the business.

Key project(s) you are currently working on:
Currently working on a complex supply chain outsourcing deal which will be unique in the industry. Enormous challenges, but will place us in a better position in the end.

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Key challenge is maintaining market share and margins in a very competitive market.

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Overcoming this challenge will be by giving customers more value, not necessarily reduced costs. 
 

I’m currently acting as Director of Sourcing at Chr Hansen, a leading bioscience company in Denmark. I have more than 12 years of procurement and sourcing experience across different industries. At Chr Hansen I have over the past 5 years been heavily involved in the transformation process of the Sourcing department addressing processes, tools, competences, organisational structure and overall value contribution of Sourcing.

Additionally, I’m an external lecturer at the Department of Operations Management at Copenhagen Business School (CBS) with speciality within procurement and strategic sourcing.

Key project you are currently working on:
Build platform to support continued high level value contribution

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Increase robustness and efficiency to support extended Sourcing reach, geographically and spend areas

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Focus on competence development, increased spend under management and policy and contract compliance.

For the past three and a half years Ed Worthington has managed the procurement function for Virgin Holidays Group. Prior to working for Virgin Holidays, Ed worked for a number of public sector organisations, including 2 years spent working for the Metropolitan Police Service in their procurement team. He lives in Brighton.

Key project you are currently working on:
Category planning for FY 12/13 – detailed planning for each department across the VHL group for all group indirect expenditure.

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Continuing to reduce maverick expenditure, mitigate risk and improve compliance to Procurement ways of working across the group

How you are overcoming these challenges:
We’ve built and launched a new procurement services website. We’re promoting key information internally via the site, seminars, internal communications, emails, top down direction and ground level demonstration of results.

Alan McQuade currently heads the Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA) Global Supply Chain Management group. He leads a group responsible for supply chain management and vendor activity across the EMEA region, supporting vendor, sourcing and contractual activity across 23 EMEA countries. McQuade joined Bank of America in December 2005 and has since held a variety of positions in Global SCM, ranging from building the Europe Card Services SCM unit, running the APAC Supply Chain Group, leading the EMEA offshore activities to low cost service locations and running SCM activity for the bank’s Global Banking, Markets and Wealth Management divisions in EMEA.

Prior to joining the Bank of America, McQuade held a variety of roles across sourcing, Purchase to Pay (P2P), supplier relationship management and outsourcing, in sectors ranging from manufacturing, government and consulting. McQuade holds an honor’s degree in mathematical sciences from the University of Strathclyde, a post-graduate degree in law from London Guildhall and is a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply (CIPS) in the UK. He is based in London.

Prior to joining corporate life, McQuade enjoyed a brief career in professional football in Scotland, and still enjoys playing and coaching football in London in his spare time.

Key project(s) you are currently working on:
At Merrill Lynch, and across much of the financial sector, Vendor oversight across the lines of businesses and regions is receiving a much greater Regulatory focus than previous years. This is leading to a range of Internal programmes and related change activity to ensure the Regions and businesses have clearly evidenced controls, routines, oversight and understanding of their vendor and outsourced activity, and in terms of ensuring the correct escalation and committees are in place around such activity. The EMEA Supply Chain group are central to the implementation activity around this.

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
The lack of growth in the Eurozone, and the reducing revenues across wholesale and investment banking has created a more visible and significant pressure on expenses, across the Bank. This, combined with the increasing Regulatory focus around 3rd party activity is leading to an environment whereby the group have to come up with new and innovative ways to reduce our 3rd party cost base, whilst also ensuring a stronger control environment across all Regions.

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Rollout of enhanced vendor mgt routines, especially in our emerging markets environment, as well as close partnering with our business areas to manage down 3rd party reduction initiatives across a range of spend categories and business processes.

Erik Dam joined the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, a leading lawn & garden consumer brand company with HQ in Marysville (Ohio), in 2002 and currently holds the position of Director Global Purchasing managing an organization with locations in the USA, Europe and China. Previously, he has held various direct procurement leadership roles within the company.

In addition, Erik has acquired a broad international experience at Firgos where he had various sales and marketing positions both in B2B as well as B2C businesses.

Luca is currently acting as Director of Procurement, Logistics, HSE and Security at Montepaschi Group (third Italian leading banking group).

Luca has more than 20 years of procurement management experience spent with Italian and multinational companies (Esa Elettronica, Gewiss, Vemer, Black&Decker Power Tools, Riello Group, GlaxoSmithKline) across several market sectors (eg: electronic devices, products for residential and industrial electrical networking, air conditioning and heating systems, electric power tools, pharma) looking after procurement both of production and non-production materials and services.

Luca is graduated in Industrial Electronics.

He is founder and co-Chairman of the not-for-profit Italian organisation “Acquisti & Sostenibilità” (est.2007) with the aim to inspire sustainable and responsible procurement/supply chain practices across professionals community.

Key project you are currently working on:
Cash transport and management process review, paperless bank, Real Estate associated costs

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
1-“Ultra-efficiency” initiatives: more than in the past 3 years company is looking at extraordinary results in saving, expenses reduction and processes review.
2-Environmental, social and ethical Sustainability programme: we anyway need to balance our commitment in sustainability with our economic results

How you are overcoming these challenges:
1- Full day-by-day governance on compliance and a strong interfunctional team working
2- Regular and constant consideration of sustainability criteria in any initiative

Alessandro Spadini is responsible for the procurement of Indirect Spend (Energy, Investment, Corporate and Plant services, IT&TLC) within Barilla. He joined Barilla in 1993 as engineer and project manager for the Technical Department and R&D. Then he moved to Operations, where he covered different roles (Technical Area Manager, Production Manager, Plant Director) in some plants in Italy and in the US. This expertise in Operations was empowered leading a central project for the plants’ organization development.

He joined Purchasing in 2009, driving the improvement of the procurement governance for indirect spend within Barilla Group. In this role he mainly focuses on leveraging synergies among the different Barilla Legal Entities at international level, designing a network of “multifunction indirect buyers”.

He is now leading the Barilla SRM team, aimed at redesign the tools and approaches for a new supplier relationship management.

Key project(s) you are currently working on:
• Review the SRM process at Group level: re-assess the supplier base segmentation, re-define approach and management resources depending on supplier strategy, implement new IT tools, renew our collaboration tools with strategic suppliers
• Volatility risk management on commodity

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
• Respect the budget in a very uncertain global economy (and supply market)
• Support my Company’s growth in emerging markets

How you are overcoming these challenges:
• With the proper deployment of the key projects and sourcing strategy
• Improving governance on procurement procedures and tail end spend management

Michael K. Walter among several supply chain positions since 1986, has been with Procurement for over 15 years, spent 5 years in Sales & Marketing and joined Harman in 2008 as head of Indirect Procurement Services Europe in the Harman Automotive Division. Shortly after his role was expanded across all Harman divisions and in 2010 he was appointed to head all of Indirect Procurement Services globally, driving Harman Indirect Procurement strategy, systems and transformation. Prior to Harman Michael lead the Europe, Africa, Latin America and French Canada Procurement Operation Center for one of the largest IT, Software and Services companies and speared their operation transformation and BPO footprint globally.

Key project you are currently working on:
System & Process transformation for all of Harman Indirect Procurement

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Taking advantage of financial and economical market dynamics and turning them to cost savings and service benefits

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Centralized information data availability driving strategy and systems in support of the growing needs and flexibility of our internal clients

Michael has over ten years' experience with Capital One, joining us from the Schroders in 1999 to take up a number of roles both in the US and Canadian card business, working in Marketing and Credit divisions. He moved to the UK businessin 2005 to work in Marketing and Analysis, taking his career a step further the following year when he became Head of Risk Operations and then Chief Operating Officer in 2009.

In 2011 Michael moved back in to Marketing and Analysis as Chief Marketing Officer.

Michael has an MBA in Business Administration from INSEAD and a BA from Cambridge University.

He is Married to Rachel who he met while working in the US and they have 2 sons Teddy (9) and Owen (5).

Key project you are currently working on:
Rebuilding the Capital One Brand presence after years of limited advertising, delivering on a core brand promise of helping customers rebuild credit, cracking the code on making Collecting money from delinquent customers a positive customer experience

What you foresee being your key challenges in 2012:
Pressures on costs, increasing regulation and poor reputation of the Financial Services industry

Sven has 15 years of experience in sourcing both direct and indirect materials. His focus is mainly on centralizing, upgrading and re-organizing local or regional purchasing departments into centralized Strategic Sourcing departments. He has worked with a number of listed companies such as Avery Dennison, Ecolab and Lonza. At Avery he was ultimately responsible for the global sourcing of paper and for the integration of two competitors. At Ecolab he was responsible for creating a central Sourcing organisation and moving it to Switzerland. At Lonza he has implemented a global Sourcing department, merging 4 divisional Purchasing organisations. He holds an MBA from Purdue University and an IMM in International Management from ESCP in Paris.

Key project you are currently working on:
Structuring and implementing a new Indirect Sourcing organisation

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Internal resistance and data infrastructure with regards to the above

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Benchmarking peer organisations, learning from their experience and advice

Philippe Robert started his career with Procter & Gamble. He joined The Dow Chemical Company in 1990, where he held several Marketing and Business Management positions in the field of Engineering Plastics. In 2005, he took the VP Raw Materials Procurement position at Alcan Packaging.

Since 2009, he works with Alstom Power as VP Sourcing.

Key project you are currently working on:
I am currently in the process of deploying "Commodity Networks" across businesses from Alstom. Businesses retain their sourcing autonomy while contributing to the development of a common sourcing strategy for key commodities, sharing key suppliers contracts and striving for supplier performance improvement and innovation

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Localizing the supply base close to operations e.g. in India or Russia and other more exotic geographies, improving working capital and improving the sustainability and cost effectiveness of the supply chain

How you are overcoming these challenges:
• Localizing sourcing resources and making geographies more accountable
• Reduction of Lead-time and cycle-time
• Implementation of a rigorous and unified supplier qualification process including new financial, quality and corporate social responsibility criteria

Since mid 2011, Fabien has been Director of Ambition 2015 Achats (groupe La Poste’s procurement plan). He is in charge of leading the evolution of the Procurement Function in line with the company’s Ambition 2015 strategic plan. He is responsible for setting up the conditions of refined dialogues and agendas with Top Management, Executive Committee, local CPOs and teams, and for influencing change in a context of strong corporate transformation driven by markets and shareholders’ requirements.

He is also Director of Indirect Purchasing (high-value services) and has responsibility for 600M€+ yearly spending of strategic value (consulting services, recruitment, advertising, communication, marketing studies, web, insurance, training, etc.). He works in close relationship upward with key internal clients (Executive Committee Representatives and their Directors), downward with users and suppliers, and transversally with purchasing teams. 2009 and 2010 savings achieved: 19%. 2011 (to date): 15%.

Key project(s) you are currently working on:
Ambition 2015 Achats, an initiative aligned with Groupe La Poste’s Ambition 2015 Strategic Plan, and aimed at reinforcing the influence of Procurement in ten workstreams

What you foresee being your key challenges for the next 12 months:
Resistance to change

How you are overcoming these challenges:
Careful assessment of stakeholders’ respective positions, in order to alleviate concerns and reinforce potential benefits

23+years in a commercial environment, full end to end supply chain management experience, key skills are in change and transformation. Has worked in many blue chip organisations including FMCG black & white goods, Automotive, Life Sciences, Water Industry, Retail & Construction. Joined the Royal Mint in 2009 with the remit of transforming and developing the supply chain team to not only be seen as 'adding value' but to drive 'best in class' behaviours and be integral to the business model and delivery of its strategies.

Silvester de Keijzer is Senior Vice President Business Development EMEA at Beeline International based in Zurich.


He joined Beeline in 2011 with more than 22 years international experience within HR consulting and outsourcing. Seasoned operationally orientated leader with multi-industry experience, building, strengthening and leading functions within Business/HR Consulting, Outplacement, Recruitment and HR-Outsourcing. Comprehensive in-depth experience in over 20 countries. Strong cross border track record in helping companies to deliver results. Throughout his career, Silvester has earned a number of professional certifications, including Career Counseling and Assessments.