Luke 10: 0:10

Hello and welcome to let's Talk Procurement, the only show you need to master the art of procurement, let's go. So welcome to this amazing ep of let's talk procurement. We've got a special guest here, uh, so special in fact that we've decided to not do a bulletin today. We'll save that for another episode. Make sure you email us on our email to luke's one sip at gmailcom. That's the number two, looks plural, the number one cip at gmailcom. Also, we have an insta, don't we? What's that?

Luke 1: 0:56

let's underscore talk, underscore procurement. Drop us a, drop us a little message on there, like some of our photos. Don't forget to give us a cheeky review if you enjoy this, uh, this episode and uh, what I'd love to say is sit back, relax and enjoy. Hello and welcome to the virtual studio, nick. It's fantastic to have you here. How are you doing?

Nick Drewe: 1:35

Wonderful to see you guys again. Yeah, doing well, thanks. Yeah, it's been a good week. As we ramp up towards the end of the year, it's always a busy time for us all, isn't it?

Luke 1: 1:44

Well, yeah, it's a catch-22, isn't it? You always think that December should be nice and quiet, but then everyone tries to get things over the line before they go on holiday or annual leave, so you end up doing more in a shorter period.

Nick Drewe: 1:55

Exactly All about trying to plan for next year, trying to find some headspace for that, whilst also, oh yeah, we've got to finish this one first, haven't we? There's a few things left to do, so, yeah, it's a bit of a melee and squeezing a podcast in the middle.

Luke 1: 2:07

So we're very, very grateful for your time. I do appreciate that. Um, what we normally do to get into a bit about nick get to know nick. You know what's what's going on in that brain of yours we let our wild card luke 10. Um, do some quick fire questions. Sometimes they turn out to be not very quick fire, sometimes they're very obscure and uh, yeah, we'll just find a little bit more about you, that's okay yeah, so so think of these as sort of like classic unhinged pub chats, I suppose.

Luke 10: 2:42

Um, that, that's that sort of stuff. But the first, the first one isn't. The first one is just sort of can you give us a bit of an introduction on yourself?

Nick Drewe: 2:49

so name, occupation, experience, things around that sort of area name, occupation you sound like I'm in a GP suddenly, uh yeah how much beer do you drink in a week? Yeah, exactly what kind of podcast is this? Yeah, so, nick Drew, I'm one of the co-founders of Market Dojo. My experience so, yeah, I kind of fell into procurement Like I don't know if you guys did as well, but there's a fair few of us yeah, we all did, I think.

Nick Drewe: 3:26

So. I mean, I was in my late teens a tennis coach and then did an engineering degree. Thought, yeah, I could go work for Formula One, that'd be fun. And actual fact I diverted off into business. I did a little business module and really really enjoyed it. And so I found a job in management consulting which was focusing on supply chain, so sort of working with big businesses, helping them save money, manage costs, some leading category management programs doing lots of sort of opportunity assessment for you know how can they can sharpen up the bottom line, and that kind of introduced me to procurement. So, yeah, that was back in 2006, did that for five years, really enjoyed it.

Nick Drewe: 4:16

Lots of fun consulting engagements all around the world for all sorts of exciting companies in aerospace, finance, manufacturing, even, you know, premier League sports, all sorts of mixed things. But yeah, there's lots of consulting work. I just kind of missed the dynamism that came with tech and kind of saw that you know, whilst I was doing these consulting projects there was, um, yeah, just a bit of a gap in the tech market for something quick, easy and effective for companies to use themselves rather than as a sort of guided service by, you know, overpaid consultants like myself at the time. Uh, and so, yeah, we thought, well, you know what if we just invented like a procurement app that you could just quickly jump into run some some projects, get some value and then just leave it behind if you didn't need it any further beyond that? And so I got into market dojo and been doing that for about 14 years now, which is, yeah, flown by, actually amazing can I, can I ask where the, where the name market dojo came from?

Luke 1: 5:08

because that that's uh, it's an unusual name, but I quite like it yeah, it is.

Nick Drewe: 5:13

I've got two versions of this story right. There's a sort of corporate version, uh, that you know, market, dojo, it's uh, the dojo literally means place of the way in japanese, so it's kind of like the marketplace or the way to market is kind of how we interpret it, as well as being, like, you know, dojo, that martial arts connotation. So it's kind of like, you know, the dojo is where you bring your suppliers in to do your negotiation, to do battle. Yeah, yeah, well, hopefully, you know, these days it's about much more than fighting. It's all about finding the win-win, isn't it so? But it's, uh, you know that that connotation. So that's the sort of corporate version. And then there's the perhaps more honest version, which is near to me where I live in here in bristol is, uh, is a nightclub called dojos, uh, and I quite like the name. So, yeah, why not go with that? Put something in front of of it. I don't know market, because it's vaguely to do with marketplaces. Yeah, go on then. So there we are. You can believe whichever one you wish to.

Luke 1: 6:13

Oh, I know which one it is, don't I? We'll be meeting up with you for a night at dojos very soon, hopefully.

Nick Drewe: 6:19

Sadly it's shut.

Luke 1: 6:21

It's shut.

Nick Drewe: 6:21

This is the only dojo in bristol that's still going now, so uh, yeah, sad time in the legacy exactly sorry, look over to you.

Luke 1: 6:30

Go on, let's, let's go.

Luke 10: 6:31

No, no cool that's good, that's a good one. Um, the next one to potentially shorter. So, uh, sweet or savory I'm a savory person.

Nick Drewe: 6:41

Yeah to my wife's triggering. Um, I will quite happily go and have another main course as my pudding, rather than to go around and have a dessert fair enough, yeah, and then similar to that um, do you have a go-to meal deal? Um, right now it's Tesco's. That was my lunch as well. Three pound 40 on the uh, on the old club card thing bargain it's gone up a lot.

Luke 1: 7:04

To be fair, though, remember the two pound 50 days tough times, pal.

Nick Drewe: 7:08

We've got to dig deep. But you know, three pound 40 I I won't question what's gone into the ingredients. Um, I'm not entirely sure it's too nutritious, but it does the job. Uh, so that that's my current. Uh, yeah, go-to what was guys, what do you get into?

Luke 10: 7:26

Yeah, tesco.

Luke 1: 7:27

Tesco meal deal. Yeah, you're a plain ham sandwich with a water and a packet of ready salted crisps sort of vibe.

Nick Drewe: 7:36

Oh wow, that is very straight back.

Luke 10: 7:39

Wow, that's him all over, no.

Nick Drewe: 7:47

I'm on a christmas special at the minute.

Luke 1: 7:48

You know turkin stuffing yes ice coffee. Yeah, you want a triple sandwich. Ideally, don't you get the most for your money. You want a biggest drink you can find exactly.

Nick Drewe: 7:55

I mean to be fair like a procurement, proper procurement bod, that that we are. I do like the the challenge of trying to see how expensive I can make my meal and then get the massive saving. I think my record was getting a £7.60 cost price down to £3.40. I was particularly happy about that.

Luke 1: 8:15

I think that's got to be a challenge to the listeners, hasn't it? Has anyone got a better, better meal deal that they've come up with?

Nick Drewe: 8:19

exactly. It's an innocent smoothie. Those things cost a few quid. Yeah, the triple decker sandwich, I can't remember, like some sort of caramel biscuit thing, exotic yeah.

Luke 10: 8:35

At what point, though, do you go? Yeah, it's the most expensive one that I could get money off, but I don't actually want to eat it.

Nick Drewe: 8:44

You just got to go like, it doesn't matter. You have to eat it if it's to go like it doesn't matter.

Luke 10: 8:46

You have to eat if it's the most expensive one.

Nick Drewe: 8:48

You've got no choice yeah, I think I ended up giving a smoothie to my kids yeah, okay, so questions start to get a little bit stranger now, I think so.

Luke 10: 8:59

A trolley traveling down a track heading towards two people you have the option to pull the lever and switch it to another track where it hits one person. So would you do it?

Nick Drewe: 9:12

The alternative being it's going to hit the two people.

Luke 10: 9:14

Yeah, it's going towards the two people. You can switch it to hit one person.

Nick Drewe: 9:18

I feel like I'm working for Tesla suddenly. Yeah, I mean mean greater goods. One person, yeah, short of any kind of lateral thinking of you know, jumping in front of it myself. Um, yeah, go with that fair enough.

Luke 10: 9:37

Yeah, maybe that we should update the question as well. It should be, if you. If the tesla is, uh, on autopilot heading towards two people, okay, so next question uh, would you rather million pounds up front or 10 million chance of 10 million, if you beat a warthog in a fight.

Nick Drewe: 9:59

Beat your warthog in a fight. They're tough animals.

Luke 10: 10:03

Warthog in a fight. They're tough animals.

Luke 1: 10:04

Apart from the one on the Lion King.

Nick Drewe: 10:07

Yeah, I mean that was a bit of a soft touch. Do I fancy a Warthog? He's ready for a scrap in the dojo. I think I am Bring him into the dojo. Lea, let's see how we'll do. Yeah, if I get to choose where we can have this showdown, then I reckon I'll choose a swimming pool. I reckon I could take them. Come on let's swim. Probably.

Luke 10: 10:33

Okay, so would you rather have robotic fingers or robotic toes?

Luke 1: 10:41

He's looking down at his fingers now I am.

Nick Drewe: 10:43

I'm looking at my feet. I'd go with robotic fingers because I do a bit of climbing and, um, I reckon robotic fingers you just like zip up a wall with, like, just running, like that great easy nice, nice, okay.

Luke 10: 11:00

So would you rather negotiate with one head of procurement or 10 junior buyers?

Nick Drewe: 11:07

one head of procurement? Definitely I. I think 10 junior buyers. You'd be all over the shop um. You'd get questions like yours, luke, luke, 10, you know um I'll just be like I'm sorry. Well, where are we going with this one um, whereas, uh, I think if you negotiate with that head of procurement, you're gonna be able to have a pretty straight conversation, which I think would be better for everybody.

Luke 10: 11:29

Nice? No, just a sport. No, I'm glad, I'm glad. And then the last question is what animal do you think would be best in procurement, and why?

Luke 1: 11:43

So really don't say a warthog, because you've just battered one yeah, just bad.

Nick Drewe: 11:47

Then yeah, yeah, if I can take it out, then it's not good enough. Um, animal, that's best, I reckon. I don't know something like a bear. Perhaps you know you can kind of appear slightly docile, you know you think you think you can make friends with it. But you know you go a step too far if you you put something under threat, that that bear's coming for you and you better watch out. But otherwise it can be good as gold and you won't even notice it's there I really like that.

Luke 1: 12:18

That's one of my favorites and I think what I like about bears is they're very territorial and I always think if someone comes into my little supplier patch, I get really, you know, like they're trying to bring their own supplier into this nicely managed stack of suppliers. I get I get quite, uh, territorial.

Nick Drewe: 12:30

So I like that yeah, bear you don't want to pick, you know. Yeah, you're happy to see them from afar, but you know you don't want to pick a fight with a bear because it will take you down.

Luke 1: 12:40

So just admire it from afar and do that and we're partial to some honeys. Honey, honey, some honeys.

Nick Drewe: 12:48

Interesting, partial to a bit of honey. Okay.

Luke 1: 12:51

Yes.

Nick Drewe: 12:52

You're more of a Winnie the Pooh type bear. I was thinking more grizzly or polar, but you know we'll go with Winnie the Pooh maybe.

Luke 1: 12:59

Depends on the day of the week. Let's go with that. That's true. Look, I think you did really well there, nick. Um, I honestly I have no idea what he's going to come out with and I just much clue as you do. So, uh, thank you for entertaining the junior, the junior buyer yeah, no you're.

Nick Drewe: 13:14

Yeah, I like that. That's fun. Um, I must admit, you know, before this podcast, I was thinking I wonder what kind of questions these guys are going to ask. I should probably brush up on. You know how I came about with market dojo, or procurement, what the trends these days? Where's ai going? No, no, no, no. What animal is best in procurement? And uh and so forth. Yeah, yeah, who do you want to scrap?

Luke 1: 13:37

yeah, we go there. Um well, I think, in all seriousness, when some of the the I guess the serious content we do, we do have some questions that we think you could provide a lot of value and insights onto, based on your background where you've kind of got some significant experience. I think the one I would like to start with is probably around auctions, reverse auctions and kind of you know to you what is a reverse auction and I guess why? Why do you see that they are valuable in procurement? Because I I get a mix of feedback on them and I'll touch on that slightly further into the conversation yeah, certainly get a mix of feedback, that's for sure.

Nick Drewe: 14:18

But um, I I really like auctions myself because, you know, back in the consulting days where we were very much under the thumb for delivering value, reverse auctions were just a very clear way to demonstrate what procurement do, to make it real and very visible to business stakeholders. These auctions would often involve very senior people around the organization. In some cases we used to have the auction unfolding in the cafeteria of multi-billion dollar defense organizations. Suddenly, the hundreds of staff having their lunch would see this negotiation live in front of their eyes and be like what's this thing up here? Yeah, that's procurement doing a negotiation with a supplier at the minute Well, you know, suppliers, plural and it all sort of come alive and be like, oh, wow, that's really exciting, those numbers there, are they real? It's like, yeah, yeah, that's actually bottom line saving that's being generated there.

Nick Drewe: 15:18

And you get like, you know, ceo, cfo, all kind of just casually strolling by like, wow, this is what you guys are up to, this is, this is fantastic, whereas a lot of what procurement do is sort of under the parapet. Right, you know, you're kind of saving the day with, you know, rewriting a bit of a contract or, you know, stepping into a negotiation at the final hour to sort of bring it back on track or whatever. Um, so I love that sort of proactivity and the profile, high profile, that an auction can bring. There are all the benefits associated. There's cost savings, of course, throughout most of them, time savings just a nice, efficient way to negotiate potentially. And the most suppliers we've seen in an auction has been hundreds, literally hundreds of suppliers.

Luke 1: 16:06

I was going to ask that say, how many would you say is an optimal amount to have in an auction, but I guess maybe there is no limit.

Nick Drewe: 16:13

Well, in theory there's no limit. I mean, yeah, in practical terms there is. You know you don't necessarily need so many suppliers and you've kind of got a fairly good feel for the market value that you're getting. Our data shows after about 12 suppliers. So 12 kind of got a fairly good feel for the market value that you're getting after you. Our data shows after about 12 suppliers.

Nick Drewe: 16:26

So 12 suppliers is about peak and clearly, if that doesn't apply to all spend areas, um, some you may only have one or two suppliers, of course, but in general, beyond 12 suppliers in a negotiation that you get real diminishing returns, it was. You know there's no extra incremental values as you add more. Um, so yeah, if you get that many in a in a live negotiation that's quite a lot of hard work around a, around a table, a board table, but in an auction it's that's 25 minutes work, half an hour work, um, once you've concluded this sort of the tender process, which is the important thing, I think, there's a lot of people out there that think, like an auction has to take a fundamentally different approach at the beginning.

Nick Drewe: 17:05

But it doesn't. You know, you run your tender process as you would normally and it's just like oh, at the end, instead of doing this one-to-one negotiation or whatever, we're actually going to do this 30 minute auction. And here's your opportunity as a supplier, to put your best foot forward and hear from us live, in real time, where you stand, which not often a uh, an opportunity that suppliers have. You know, usually with procurement, it's like, yeah, you're winning, or well, you're not winning. You know, yeah, you're successful, you're not, rather than that, you're about five percent off. What do you want to do about that?

Luke 1: 17:38

and you can't yeah, you can't have all of those kind of dynamic conversations with, say, 12, even three or four suppliers to try and balance them all and kind of keep them updated as to where they sit in the overall competitiveness. It's really hard to do in in real time when you've got a deal and a kind of deadline fast approaching. So I can, I can see that being a massive benefit and, I think, just for the listeners benefits obviously. I guess an auction is is something like an ebay, where you're where you're bidding up to win, and a reverse auction is I know it sounds daft, but it is the opposite of that where you're, you're reducing your price to be the lowest price overall. Right, is that correct?

Nick Drewe: 18:15

yeah, in in general. Yeah, I mean you know suppliers are competing to try and secure a contract for the goods and services that you're you're offering. Um, it's not just price. I mean you know that that's a little bit of a misconception some. Some can be just price. Um, you know there are lots of different auction formats and and rules that you can introduce. Um, often you might have a more of a sort of weighted auction whereby the decision of which supplier you choose is according to other factors, just like you do in a tender tender. Your balance score card of like look, 20% is based on quality, 30% is based on commercials, the rest is just based on your abilities to service our needs, etc. You mirror exactly that in the auction.

Luke 1: 19:00

Usually it's just the price that the suppliers can tweak, but they get their feedback on the whole to make sure that if they are slightly more expensive than others but they are providing a better quality of delivery, that that gets recognised in their negotiation one of the challenges I sometimes have is obviously contractual terms and say we might have a customer and they kind of stipulate that we need X amount of liabilities we need to take that risk on and we would then be expected to attempt to flow that down to our supply chain. And I think actually we often have those conversations about price, quantity etc. And then the terms discussion could be left a little bit too late.

Nick Drewe: 19:48

Yeah, you can do a multitude of approaches there. So, yeah, one approach is to get all the upfront agreements from suppliers so that they're all sort of bidding on like with like terms, that all those liabilities etc have been incorporated in their proposal so that ultimately the pricing they put forward at the end is just sorry. I'm just seeing your signal a bit coming out, but yeah, so ultimately the pricing that the suppliers put forward at the end is based on equal terms to others. But also, you can structure the auction so that these other variables are also open to suppliers to tweak during the auction. So they can say well, here's my price, but this is the quality of I don't know raw material I'm going to give you and this is the payment terms that I will accept. These are the logistics lead times I can offer you as a result. So you can kind of logistics lead times I can offer you as a result, so you can kind of tweak the different variables that constitute the overall offer.

Nick Drewe: 20:49

Live in an auction. It's a bit more work to set the auction up up front, to sort of do all the formula that will translate these different variables into a pounds and pence outcome. What's it worth to you to have a quicker lead time, for example, what's it worth to you to have a quicker lead time, for example, what's it worth to you to have a better quality of raw material? But if you can evaluate those things which you need to, because you know these are all important in order to be able to make a decision. But you can build it all in the auction and then the suppliers can kind of, you know, pick and choose those different variables fantastic so so element of it.

Luke 10: 21:24

I like how it's kind of we seem to say a few times that procurement is often recognized for what we do wrong rather than what we get right. I think when we do things right sometimes goes under the radar. So I guess my my question was how do you kind of, um, what preparation do you need to do before you start something like a reverse auction? You'd need, I assume you need to get your kind of must what is it? Mil must, uh, what's the middle one? And then, like, do you know what I'm trying to say? That sort of negotiation no idea mate I feel like you're making idea mate

Nick Drewe: 22:06

I'm trying to work out mil something it's something to do must.

Luke 10: 22:12

Anyway, it's to do with negotiations, but yeah, my, my overall question was that how do you prepare before something like that?

Nick Drewe: 22:19

yeah, I, the whole tender process comes before, right, you don't wake up in the morning and go I'm going to do an auction now. Who can we negotiate with? Oh, I don't know, let's just bring these six suppliers in. Right, guys, fight. It's following a proper procurement, diligent process, whereby you have truly understood the market, who the key players are. You've gone from a long list of well, here are all the potential suppliers that we could invite to this process and you've whittled it down to an approved shortlist that meet your needs, have the capabilities, et cetera. You've understood their initial pricing, that they are competitive, that they've understood pricing your needs.

Nick Drewe: 23:04

You know that any errant bids and any errant suppliers have been knocked out of that process to then end up with, like a you know, maybe anywhere between three and 15 suppliers that you're, in theory, pretty happy to work with, and it's important that you run these things with. You know a high degree of intent, that it and that it is equitable. You know the the suppliers do have a genuine chance of winning something here. Um, and, yeah, bring, bring them through into an auction once you've done all that vetting. Basically, um, so follow your your good procurement process and just keep, keep your turn, your negotiation process open, that an auction can be done, by which I mean in your ITT or your invitation to tenders or anything like that just say, look, this process may conclude with an auction and we will let you know, nearer the time, if that is our desired outcome, just keeping the door open.

Luke 1: 24:05

I think from personal experience experience a couple of the well, one of the main issues I've had with it is getting the suppliers on board to to compete in an auction which and I'm talking here about suppliers I've already engaged for other pieces of business, you know, they're perhaps a known entity to myself and the business and and then opening it up to something that is competitive and I'm being open and honest, it's kind of things that you would expect to be perfect for an auction. Um, you know, on my off the shelf things that aren't bespoken could be fairly, that could be competed fairly openly. So I've struggled to get full supplier engagement on it and I don't know if that's a. Is that a me not doing preparation? Is it a suppliers are just hesitant because they don't want to waste time or win? I don't know, but have you kind of got any insights on that?

Nick Drewe: 24:59

Yeah, it comes up. There are a number of potential reasons why you know from, yeah, misinformed. You know they weren't aware and suddenly this is a bit of a surprise, particularly if it's put upon them right at the last minute and they've already put in, you know, considerable time and effort to sharpen up their offers and then suddenly it's like and we're going to auction you as well. It's like whoa, that was not clear. So we always advise clients to be clear of their intentions up front. So we always advise clients to be clear of their intentions up front to give suppliers plenty of time to get ready. Sometimes it's a misconception from the suppliers of the process. There's race to the bottom. That can be construed as. But, as I say, multitude of variables can go into the outcome. It's not just price. The decision is. Multitude of variables can go into the outcome. It's not just price. Um the the decision is often very balanced. You know from from the team um. So I think to get proper engagement, just be very honest, open up front with suppliers of your intentions, follow a diligent process. They do feel like you, like you guys are running this properly. It's not just lowest winds. Consider your supply market, clearly. If you're I don't know buying Microsoft software. It's like you're going to have a hard time getting Microsoft to do an auction for it.

Nick Drewe: 26:23

But in certain supply markets there's some great opportunity. You can work on the sales pitch to suppliers as well. I think that's something in procurement we forget sometimes. We are also salespeople in procurement. We do have to sell to our colleagues and stakeholders. We have to sell to our suppliers sometimes and put it across to suppliers that it is genuinely a good opportunity for them to see real feedback, to see how they stand in the market, a bit of market intelligence to lean on what they're good at in their overall offer, not just the price.

Nick Drewe: 26:55

To the extent that Market Dojo, we've bid in auctions lots of times for prospective clients and existing clients. We've done pretty well out of it and, to be honest, we quite enjoy the process because we get a decision faster. You know the number of times we get an RFP land on our desk saying, hey, can you fill out these five billion questions about your product? And you know all the must, have and likes to have some stuff. And then you know you spend weeks doing this stuff, submit it through and hear nothing. You're like guys, what's the result? Oh yeah, yeah, sorry you weren't successful. What was the opportunity to come back with anything? What? Why were we too expensive? Were we missed the point somewhere? Whereas an auction you know you're going to get your outcome within that next 30 minutes.

Luke 1: 27:39

You're going to know where you stand, and that is advantageous a little penny just dropped in my head and it's probably there's probably a reason that maybe doesn't exist, but kind of using this system for recruitment as well, in the sense that you know when we're applying for roles. You often send out quite a few applications and, exactly as you said, it takes ages to get a response, even to know whether you were successful or weren't successful, to know whether you were successful or weren't successful, and and sometimes all you want is a simple, almost automated feedback just to say sorry, unsuccessful, based on xyz or or just a. You know we're not ready to to hire yet or something like that. But yeah, I don't know, I'm just, I'm just, I'm just thinking out loud there. It seemed like a you're.

Nick Drewe: 28:23

You're right. I mean there's a lot to be said. I mean I'm a big fan of like spot auctions. You know where. It's not some massive three, five year contract that you're tendering, worth millions of pounds, and it's all high profile, high stakes, but they can be just each individual call off, each individual purchase requisition. You know it's like right, I need like a bit of labor for a couple of days to do this type of job. I've got three approved vendors out there. Who wants it most? It could be a bit of consulting work, a bit of finance work.

Nick Drewe: 28:55

We do a lot of spot auctions for fuel. So a big waste management company across Europe. Every day they need to fill up fuel tanks for their depots around the country, around countries plural and they just throw it out to their panel of approved suppliers and say guys, who wants to fill up the tank today? What's your offer? And it's just a very quick, easy way of just getting the latest market price and 99% of it is automated. They know all the characteristics that it needs to be for that particular auction. And just click a few buttons, voila it's created.

Nick Drewe: 29:26

Suppliers can go bidding particular auction. And just click a few buttons, voila it's created suppliers can go bidding. Uh, we did the same with, you know logistics moving big, heavy stuff around the planet. You know, just spot auction it, who wants it most today, go for it. Um, very, very effective way at driving market price. And you know, following very closely as sort of you know, your own commodity index. Uh, rather than trying to predict the future and sign up a big deal today that's going to cover all your logistics needs for the next 12 months, which you can end up being wildly off market price if you're not careful.

Luke 1: 29:55

I bet, and are you thinking about AI and its role in procurement at all? Is that something that's come up? I mean, we're seeing it everywhere. It's hard, you know it's hard not to kind of, I guess, cotton on to things, things like chat, gpt and all of these wonderful solutions that even aren't as well known but are kind of there in the background and have been for a few years. But you know, is it something you're looking at?

Nick Drewe: 30:17

yeah, it is absolutely we've got. We've got a few bits in in the tool already. Um, yeah, I think you're right. There's a lot of buzz about it. You know you get these rfps going.

Nick Drewe: 30:24

Hey, have you got AI in your solutions? Yeah, what do you need it to do? I don't know. Just has it got AI in it? I'd tick a box.

Nick Drewe: 30:33

So I think we need to be careful that AI actually has to add value somewhere. Right, it's not just oh, look, you can use some you know neuro-linguistic programming to do something, and actually it would have been quicker just to do that manually to do something, and actually it would have been quicker just do that manually. So, yeah, we've got AI for generating RFIs and RFPs, which is genuinely a time saver because it builds the actual thing. It doesn't just here's a load of text you can copy and paste. It actually goes and builds all your questions and predicts the kind of question type that you should ask for this question. So what security accreditations do you have? It will suggest that question and then say here are the following suggested answers in a multiple choice format that you should put to your suppliers.

Nick Drewe: 31:16

So that's pretty cool. So you can sort of interrogate to say look, I need to do a information security questionnaire for this particular tender. What questions should I ask? Or I need to hit my sustainability agenda for this questionnaire. Can you go and put in 15 ESG questions that would align to that. So that's pretty cool. We do just partnering with a solution for supplier discovery as well. So you know, you can write in a box like I'm looking for suppliers of corrugated packaging throughout Western Europe. They've got to have ISO 9001 and be over 50 million euros in revenue and it will go. Here you go. Here's 51, in this case like 1,500 suppliers that meet the bill.

Nick Drewe: 31:58

You know, pick and choose which ones you want. And that's a genuine time saver.

Luke 1: 32:03

I was going to say that sounds amazing and that's kind of where my thoughts were. And have you heard of the term ASL before? No, gonna say that sounds amazing and that's kind of where my thoughts were. And have you heard of the term asshole before? No, asshole. Yeah, we. We like to talk about our asshole and our pistol on on the podcast quite a lot. So it's our approved supply list and our preferred supplier list.

Luke 1: 32:19

Okay, right right and uh, I think I think what's what's often, I guess, a sort of an issue is we've got a number of suppliers that all go through onboarding, they're all then added to the books and they've all got capabilities. Someone in the business has engaged them for an initial use case and and that's fantastic they deliver the work, then maybe never never engage them again, but perhaps there's a almost like if I, if I show you my asshole, you know, can that go into the tool and then look at you know I'm looking for a packaging supplier. Can you check my asshole to see what packaging suppliers we we have that align to? You know that kind of market search that the, the AI, is doing, and I think if, if you can pull out from our supplier list what you know, what might line with the RFI that we are about to do, I think that would be very unique and kind of, yeah, market leading.

Nick Drewe: 33:16

Oh, I'll take that. Dan your asshole Right, get asshole into dojo. I'll look back at that and go. What was I talking about?

Luke 1: 33:24

I've no idea what that means.

Nick Drewe: 33:27

Or, even worse, get Luke's asshole in Market Dojo, it's big as well.

Luke 1: 33:31

It is big. Is it a big asshole? Is it? It's a big asshole? Yeah?

Nick Drewe: 33:34

Interesting, interesting. I hope we've got capacity for it in the Dojo place, but yeah, honestly it has, it has. It's something we looked at last year actually, because in in dojo we don't categorize all the events that clients run. It's kind of something the client can do themselves if they want to for their own reporting. Um, and so we were kind of looking at, well, how can we quickly run through and categorize 60 000 sourcing events? Really, really simply right, using something like ai or even just more logic, right? And one of the ideas was supplies Just looking at who are the suppliers that have been invited to the corresponding events, look up a little bit of information on those suppliers, look at some patterns, some trends and say, oh, that's interesting For this event.

Nick Drewe: 34:22

All of these six suppliers seem to do packaging. That positively indicates this is a packaging tender and then you know allocate right. Well, that's a category for it packaging. It can work really well and there are solutions on the market that do this already. So when you do your bespoke supplier search, you can feed in here are the suppliers we currently work with for this commodity. Go find us others that are like that and it can do some very, very accurate analysis, accurate analysis of like. Okay, looking at all those suppliers, this is almost certainly some kind of bespoke packaging service that you're looking for right. Here are another six suppliers that look very similar to those ones that you're already working with, so it is something that's already out there.

Luke 1: 35:05

I like this. I can hear the passion you've got as well for tech. It comes out naturally, doesn't it?

Nick Drewe: 35:10

I love it. I mean, these are genuine time savings, because early in my career in the consulting world I was running sourcing projects day in, day out. I'd have six of them on the go at any one time, in all sorts of different categories. One would be six-axis CNCc machining components, then there'll be plastic injection moldings, then there'll be, like I don't know, stationary, because there was always one of them running. They were always buying stationary. And then there'll be something else for I don't know, like in one of my tenders was selling an actual business. So selling a business, uh, and sourcing potential buyers, you know, follow the same kind of process. Um, so you're running all this stuff in your head and it's all very manual. You know you're searching trade associations, the internet, you know different supplier database sites like Compass and others, to try and find all this long list of suppliers and you're calling them all. It was a lot of work involved. So to look at AI that can go look, these are the kind of suppliers I'm looking for worldwide.

Luke 1: 36:09

Find Such a time saving. Amazing, isn't it? I think question I'm going back to your intro, your little about piece. You mentioned that one of your inspirations was kind of taking tech and using it to to improve procurement and kind of work working within big businesses. And and that stuck with me because I've I've asked, I think I guess, previously around where procurement fits in for kind of smes, smaller companies is there? Do you think there's a market for it or do you think they are? Procurement as a department is kind of left out, on the basis that you know you've got to prioritize your finance. You know your finance person first and then your sales person first and you want to get that you know 10 to 15 core team. I think I think there's a lot to a lot to learn in the sme space where I think procurement could be extremely beneficial. I don't know if that's something you've seen or you you are seeing. You know, perhaps I've just not seen it, but I don't.

Nick Drewe: 37:10

I often see the smes missing out on on our skill set yeah, I mean there is a big need, um, and you're absolutely right. You know, as organizations grow and go through their maturity, you know every company like market dojo we started off. You know a couple of what product guys and tech you know developing and a few sales people. You know I found myself in sales, having moved from consulting, so that's a whole story in itself. But as you then grow, you get more salespeople, you get marketing, you get support, you get finance, as you say, and you kind of grow these different departments and then HR and so on. Procurement is often the last one, right? I mean we don't have a procurement department at Dojo. You know we don't deserve one yet. We're still pretty small. But even our parent company, you know, esker, they don't have a procurement person yet dedicated procurement and they're, you know, knocking on the door of 200 million euros in revenue.

Nick Drewe: 38:06

And you kind of think, well, surely by that scale a procurement person would be beneficial, and absolutely. I found myself helping out a little bit on some procurement projects, reporting into finance, funnily enough. But there's still a lot of money going out the door. Even at Dojo we're spending millions on this, that and the other. Just a little bit of extra rigor, a little bit of support, even if they're not called procurement, if they're just called something else, just operational support, to just be a little bit more commercially savvy, just to check these contracts that the suppliers are giving us. Because who's checking them? Is it the guys in marketing? Is it our guys in marketing? Is the guys in support, the guys in sales?

Nick Drewe: 38:52

What risk are we exposing ourselves to here? You know it's, it's. And I don't mean you know, legal risk, I mean commercial risk. You know just silly things like this contract ought to renews. Do we want that? You know that can be a suddenly a huge saving. By just saying, take that out immediately, right Now, we've just protected ourselves from this 50k spend that we could have incurred next year that we don't need. So yeah, I think there is, and there are some consultancies out there that focus on SMEs, but it's a tough sale because who do you speak to? Do you speak to the CEOs, cfos? Often they don't know. It's a pain. It's like we don't. We're not off the scale yet, guys, we don't need proper process. It's like, yeah, it's not necessarily about the proper process, it's just about a bit of, you know, specialism that's all.

Luke 1: 39:40

Maybe. Maybe because I'm thinking consultants are quite expensive, right, you hear the word consult, consultancy, and you think that's going to cost a lot. It's kind of a fearful word. Maybe it's a let's have the I don't know the, the guts to walk in and say I'm going to pay for myself by delivering these savings. And if you know, if you can prove, if you're happy to sign them off and then I'll take payment from you know, proof in the pudding sort of approach, then I think it might get us into more, more smes, more smaller businesses, or maybe not even small anymore, like you're saying about your you know, your partner company.

Nick Drewe: 40:12

So yeah, I think there's a lot of growth in procurement there is, I mean, like interesting what you say on, you know, prove your worth. Um again, back in the consulting days that's often how we took our fees was out of the savings we generated for organizations. But we'd get disputed the whole time. Because I remember doing one project it was something mundane, like you know again a stationary contract. You know they're buying like a million quid a year of stationary and we did a full sourcing project on that and culminated in an auction, saved 600 grand, 600 grand. And so we went well, here you go, here's our invoice for 150k and they're like no way we're paying that. You did like three weeks work.

Nick Drewe: 41:02

I'm not paying you 150 000 pounds for three weeks work unbelievable and it's like, well, we've saved you this, all this money that you're going to spend anyway. It's like, yeah, but you did three weeks work, so you know, it ended up a little bit of dispute. But genuinely, yeah, you know, with some good procurement rigor you can end up having huge value. But it's yeah, just going on a gain share model can end you in a bit of dispute.

Luke 1: 41:29

So yeah, watch out for that. Yeah, maybe at least secure the minimum wage bit first and then any bonuses on top.

Nick Drewe: 41:37

Yes, exactly, exactly. I mean it's interesting seeing what Elon Musk is doing, for example. You know he says he's going to save two trillion dollars or something in federal spend, uh, through his, his office of government efficiency, and it's, um, yeah, with a procurement hat on, you kind of look at that. Okay, that's, that's kind of over egging yourself. I wonder if he's on some sort of game share. It's like all right, guys, I'll only take a trillion for myself out of this. If I, uh, if I generate two trillion dollars, um, but yeah, certainly something in it for him.

Luke 1: 42:09

I can guarantee that there'll be something in it for him.

Nick Drewe: 42:13

You'd expect. So right? I mean, I see Dogecoin has gone up by 150% recently. I regret not investing in that. So maybe that's his sort of you know sly kicker, but it's staggering. And I see the job ads are going out for people to help, but for 80 hour work weeks, no salary, and just get prepared to really get stuck in. So there you go, guys. If you want an 80 hour work week for no pay, uh, just tap up elon musk, he'll, he'll sort you out wow, talk about, yeah, human rights is, uh, modern slavery fantastic, yeah.

Luke 1: 42:50

what do you? What would you say to somebody who is fresh out of school, sixth form, uni, and have just stumbled across the word procurement, what would you say would be an advantage of them going into it? What would you do to encourage more people to consider procurement as a career? Or would you just tell them to avoid it Because that could be an option?

Nick Drewe: 43:14

It could be. You're right, genuinely. No, I'm a big, a big, big fan. I'm obviously biased, but, um, we, we do a lot of uh like lectures and seminars and things to universities and business schools, um, so like cranfield and university west of england and places like that where there's a lot of um, some mba students, um, you know, in crownfield, several hundred nba students who procurement is like a tiny, tiny, tiny little piece of uh of their overall um study.

Nick Drewe: 43:48

Uh, and I don't know a huge amount about the real world aspect of procurement. Um, you know, you just kind of think you sort of raise orders and stuff for businesses. Yeah, ok, I get it. You sit at Amazon all day and just like add to cart, add to cart, add to cart. Yeah, yeah, simple. Yeah, sounds a bit dull really, I'll move on from that. And so, yeah, we do the whole e-auction simulation with them. So we put them into teams of suppliers and we get them to think about the scenario in which they're facing, where they're dealing with a negotiation with a, with a big client, and we get them bidding against each other. And you know, they've got to devise their own strategy, which it's not preordained like. They have to come up with it themselves and the decisions they make will change the outcome. We cannot predict who is going to win. It's all down to how people bid on the day and it's quite cool.

Nick Drewe: 44:40

Again back to the auction thing. It sort of brings it all alive. It's like oh, I see you guys are actually doing this for organizations. You're really kind of communicating the needs of a business, you're packaging it up, you're bringing it out to sort of approved and qualified suppliers and then you're negotiating with us to find the best outcome. Yeah, okay, there's something into this and we've had you know we started doing this back in 2010. And you know we've had people who've gone through that MBA course and now working in procurement roles and they're like Market Dojo. I remember you guys, I did that auction game with you all those years ago and you know what's interesting is we've done it with SIPs as well, you know. Thing is, we've done it with SIPs as well. You know Chartered Institute Procurement Supply very similar outcomes. Like, honestly, there's not much difference between the quality of the bidding of these MBA students and the quality of chartered procurement.

Nick Drewe: 45:27

People who've been in the role for 20 years it's maybe a little bit worrying there, but hence the you know, uniformity of an auction. It brings everyone to the same levels in some regards. But, um, I I think it's an exciting place to work. I think you know you're on the cutting edge of of business agenda. You know sustainability, new product innovation, um, welfare of of, uh, of personnel you're talking about, like you know, modern slavery there. You know that's that's something us in procurement can really influence and support.

Nick Drewe: 45:58

Um, the risk perspective of businesses. You know helping companies actually, you know, mitigate risks that they face in their industries. There's, there's a lot to it. There's a lot to it. And then the advent of technology coming in is there's a huge level investment into procure tech at the moment, which is, you know, it's an exciting place to be um, which I think is, yeah, it makes the industry profession a really good, good place and and there's plenty of opportunity to progress right, yeah, you see, procurement people hop into sales sometimes. You know, come into tech sales, uh, if you really want devils onto the dark side uh, you know, you go into, you know even solution selling and and consultancy.

Nick Drewe: 46:41

Um, so there's a lot, a lot of sort of sideways movement as well, for procurement as well. So, yeah, I'm a big fan obviously brilliant.

Luke 10: 46:50

Oh, that's great and that kind of uh. It's a good, smooth link to uh. Last couple of questions um, so first one that I had was uh, what do you think has been the most useful skill in your career?

Nick Drewe: 47:06

is there one? Is there one? That's a good question. I don't. I don't know yet. Uh, what are my skills? I? I've always been someone who's tried to work with integrity, right. I've always been about the long-term play, not not the quick win. You know that's all about me. So I think that kind of works well in procurement as well. That you're, you're trying to find that long-term win-win. Um, you know you want to have that with your suppliers. You want them them to be with you for many years to come. And, on the other foot, as a supplier to businesses, you know we want to work with those companies for a long time to come. And so it's sometimes about, you know, making compromises that will perhaps impact you negatively in the short term, but you know that in the long term's it's going to come out much more favorably for everyone. Um, so, oh yeah, I think it's probably along those lines, uh, but you're probably best off asking somebody else uh you're also very humble.

Nick Drewe: 48:10

I like that well, I don't, yeah, I, I. I have two brothers and they always put me down if ever I try and get you know a bit too cocky.

Luke 1: 48:20

Well, if you want to call them out and insult them, this is the place to do it.

Nick Drewe: 48:25

It's all right. They're not very tech savvy. They won't listen to podcasts. I doubt they've even heard of them, so don't worry about that.

Luke 10: 48:33

Amazing. So the next question, the last question for me was uh, what advice would you give to your younger self on your first day? I don't know if I was going to say first day in procurement, but maybe, yeah maybe, first day in management, consultancy, some on supply chain stuff oh, another deep question.

Luke 1: 48:55

My first day you wouldn't expect him to get deep, would you? But sometimes he does.

Nick Drewe: 49:01

I know I'm still thinking of.

Nick Drewe: 49:02

Warthogs, warthogs and haircuts, right? Yes, there are some convergences there actually. Yeah, what would I, I don't know Something cliche along the lines of just just keep learning, right? I? I think I think you know there's a tendency when you, when you're young, you're out of uni or whatever you're earning, you're like, yeah, you think you're the big dog, you know this, you know you.

Nick Drewe: 49:33

You answer back to people senior than you, going no, no, no. This is what I think we should do, um, and I think, yeah, the humble thing, you know, stay humble, keep, just keep learning. Because, man, there there are so many great people that I've worked with I'm sure the same for you guys that you know former bosses, colleagues, peers, whoever that that you've learned a heck of a lot from, uh same throughout the time at dojo, right, we've just met so many amazing mentors and people that have given their time free of charge to just lend some advice. Um, and I think the short answer is we don't know it all. We're never going to know it all. Just just keep being responsive, you know, whether it's even to people in your own team, right, you know the when they're sort of giving you ideas of how you can do things better. I think you just got to continue to stay open-minded and keep learning from, from everybody, everybody around you, um, and it'll just make you a better person, quite frankly oh, I love that.

Luke 1: 50:30

That's uh, yeah, that's that's to be honest, that's true, that's what I'm seeing in my journey. You know you're seeing those people that are willing to support, and obviously I think it's definitely you. You're one of them, so you know you've donated some time here to help not just us two, but obviously our listeners and, and I'm sure they'll gain something from this. So, honestly, massive, massive thank you for that and obviously big kudos to you as well for taking the time out and, uh, letting the dojo run itself for a short while. Hopefully it's not burned down while we, while we've had the call well this is it?

Nick Drewe: 51:00

yeah, you get to a stage where, like you know, you get a great team around you and, and you know, things can, uh, can, run themselves. Um, it's been a been a long journey, like I remember, like myself and alan, my other co-founder, along with nick martin, our third co-founder um, we, we sort of one of the reasons for setting up market dojo, so we'd go play more golf. Uh, because in our consulting days we'd play quite a bit of golf, you know, with clients and whatever. Um, I thought, oh, let me set up our own business. We could play golf all the time. We just do board meetings out on the green. It'd be great. And in 14 years, we played golf, I think three times, maybe four times. It's just not enough massively yeah totally backfired.

Nick Drewe: 51:43

You're just constantly in it. Uh, there's always work to be done, um so yeah, note to younger self you're not going to be playing any more golf if you set up your own business, that's for sure. So forget that, uh well, luke 10 can.

Luke 1: 51:59

Uh, man the fort. If you want, if you, if you want to, if you want to trust luke 10 with the dojo, for a week you can go go abroad and play some golf, um, but yeah, yeah, you're up for that.

Luke 10: 52:09

Luke 10 well, yeah, we'll see. We'll see how many uh warthogs we can fight in the dojo.

Luke 1: 52:15

In that time I'll let you know brilliant all right, nick, well, look, thank you very much for your time and, uh, it's been, it's been a real pleasure. So, yeah, everything but thank you and obviously hopefully we'll keep keep in touch and speak soon oh, thanks, gents, it's flying by no really enjoyable.

Nick Drewe: 52:30

Appreciate, appreciate that and you're, you're, yeah, interspersive, very deep, meaningful questions and, uh, yeah, others amazing.

Luke 1: 52:46

That was a good episode, wasn't it?

Luke 10: 52:49

cracking, cracking up.

Luke 1: 52:51

Hope nick's not too offended with us yeah, we stitched him up a little bit there, didn't we? We didn't really tell him what to expect, but I think that's how you get the best out of the guest yeah, fair play to him.

Luke 10: 53:02

He was willing to come on the pod with no, no preparation, no indication really of what we wanted to talk about, just go with the flow.

Luke 1: 53:09

So, um, yeah, thanks, nick yeah, massive thanks, nick and, uh, hopefully, the listeners. You have enjoyed this and learned something from Nick, but you know, if you want to learn more, we've put a link to Market Dojo in the description, and or if you don't want to reach out via Market Dojo, you can drop us some questions and we will put them in front of Nick and get back to you with an answer, because that's the type of podcast hosts we are yeah, also got the text function.

Luke 10: 53:45

So if you want to text us in uh, you know stuff about Nick. Did you enjoy the episode? But also, more generally, if you want to text us about how amazing our voice sounds, or you know how much you would love to to meet us in person and just tell us how great we are at podcasting, then yeah, get in touch and uh, see you in the next one.

Luke 1: 54:08

See you later. See you later, thank you.