SPEAKER_00: 0:17

I was just about to ask Luke One why he's got a picture of me on his bedside table.

SPEAKER_01: 0:23

Um I'm not sure why to be fair. I think I think I've got some I've got some photos printed from from the baby shower. And right there at the back of the pile of uh photos was one that you and I took together. Uh it's quite a nice photo actually. Both smiling, looking at the camera, um smoldering. So I thought, what what a photo that is. And uh my wife said to me, Well, I don't really want that photo. I think it must have been pure jealousy or something. So I said, fine, I'll take it. Put it on my bedside table, and uh it looks really good under the red LED lamp that we have on at night.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06

Nice, nice. Okay, so that one just seemed to f find uh find its way to the bedside table.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13

Um but no, it's right underneath my bedside bedside light. Um which is an LED light, so I can change the mood lighting based on uh how I feel about you for the day.

SPEAKER_00: 1:23

Nice, yeah. I like it. So you know, you might you might wake up one day and you think, uh, I I had a bad dream about Lynx Hen. Because obviously you dream about me. Obviously. And you could change it to purple.

SPEAKER_01: 1:42

Yeah, well it's currently red, which some people say is anger, but some people say it's love. So I'll let the listeners work out which one I've gone for.

SPEAKER_00: 1:52

Yeah. I like it. And we're starting a new thing today, aren't we? We keep saying we're starting season three, and then we keep actually not starting season three. I think there's been a few by the time this one goes out, there'll probably have been like five episodes where we say we've been season three. I'd like to think that well, we said for season three that we were gonna we were gonna be more um prepared, didn't we? More professional.

SPEAKER_01: 2:19

More professional, yeah. We did. And how are we gonna do that? Because I uh you know that's easier said than done, I think.

SPEAKER_00: 2:29

Well, we're gonna start by cutting down the ramble. That's what we're gonna do. So we're gonna we've put a timer on, which is uh seven minutes, and when that seven minutes is up, the ramble's over. Seven minutes in heaven, you could call it.

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

Um well it says the recording's been going for 14 minutes already, so we over time.

SPEAKER_00: 2:55

No, no, we we uh we've still got a few minutes. Is the bulletin included in the ramble?

SPEAKER_01: 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 3:01

Okay, okay, well I better start because I've got two things. Um R mate Nick, we we uh had an email from Nick R. Make sure I I uh say the name there. I'm not I don't want to say his full name. I've I purposely left a gap in between the name and the first letter of his surname there. Um he emailed us about Daniel Doe. Um and we emailed back to him, or we actually we we answered his question live on a podcast, um, which uh to which he has he has replied. He has said, Hi Luke's, I still hope you are well, despite your hurtful and mocking tones on the pod. One day one day I hope you too I hope you know what it feels like to be openly mocked by two of your heroes. That's brilliant. This is because he he basically emailed us and said, My exams are next week. Can you tell me you know the practice test you mentioned? Can you tell me where they are? And we didn't tell him in time. Um he said I found the test two months later, didn't we? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he said I found the test with about three days to spare and got 86 and 78%. So happy days.

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

Oh congratulations. Yeah, I mean we we have we have actually off the back of that uh contacted Danny Danny Do Danny Doe and uh we're cooking up something special in the background, so stay tuned for that.

SPEAKER_00: 4:41

Yep, yeah, agreed. That was a that was a smooth uh smooth little teaser there. Nice. Um Nick does give an us an idea for a future podcast, so maybe we'll come back to his email in the future. Uh if you want to get in touch with us, what's the email address? Mr. Luke1.

SPEAKER_01: 4:58

It is 2luke1sip at gmail.com. That's two luke's onesipcip at gmail.com. If you don't know how to spell sip uh the procurement way, then you're probably on the wrong podcast. You can also get in touch with us on Instagram. So our Instagram handle is um underscore let's underscore talk underscore procurement.

SPEAKER_00: 5:25

Is that right? I think it's let's underscore talk underscore procurement, but you'd probably get uh the same. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

Um correcting me there.

SPEAKER_00: 5:36

Um and um yeah, we're almost running out of our seven minutes. So did you have anything for the billetin?

SPEAKER_01: 5:43

Well, I just wanted to um very, very quickly wish you a happy birthday, my friend. So um I know I know you're you celebrated a a big milestone birthday, you turned 12. Um just recently, so yeah, happy birthday. Hope you had a lovely day celebrating, and I'm sure the listeners will wish you a happy birthday as well, my friend.

SPEAKER_00: 6:04

Thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. I um you know, it's a special time once a year. Uh birthday comes around, so you gotta you gotta make the most of it, haven't you? You gotta um you know it is it's it's Luke 10 day. If anyone if anyone listening knows my birthday, then they'll know that um it's a special day.

SPEAKER_01: 6:27

It's a very special day. Um yeah, just just very happy for you, mate. I'm I'm pleased you got through the year. You know, you've made some good progress in your personal and professional life, so um, yeah, good all round. Well done.

SPEAKER_00: 6:39

Yeah, just can't wait for my balls to drop. Why why do we say this though? It goes out into the internet. Why do why do we say this? But nobody made you say that. I know, this is the thing. I just said that completely off my own back.

SPEAKER_01: 6:59

I think when people I do think on a serious note, when people are looking for procurement material, they also want to know about the listeners' balls dropping. It kind of goes hand in hand. So you only get that with us. So stay tuned. Um let's dive into today's episode.

SPEAKER_00: 7:18

So now we're in the the main body of the uh of the episode. Um it's sort of a a partial bulletin as well. Um, I know we just did the bulletin, but this is related to the to the content, so I thought I'd save it until now. Um I saw a LinkedIn post recently, it was uh it was someone complaining about the uh what we call the corporate award route to get MCPs. So that's the assignment route for or the the non-technical language or the non-sips language. The assignment route is called the corporate award route. Um I think that's because it's only offered to companies. It's not, you know, if you if you're an individual without a without a company, I don't think you can do the assignment route in the same way that you can do SIPS exams. So the guy that was saying it, it was a little bit biased because he runs a SIPS study school that helps train helps train people for the exams, and he was saying that the corporate award route isn't a legitimate route to get MCPs. Um obviously that scared me a little bit having invested quite a lot of time and effort so far. Um so I emailed my project uh project tutored type person, um, and she said uh so sorry, I said to her, um uh I read online brackets, which of course may be false, close brackets, that the corporate award as a way of achieving MCPs isn't recognised by Offcall, which is the um the awarding body accreditator in the UK. Is that a word accreditator? No, accreditor. Accreditor. I said, would you would you be able to confirm that this isn't the case and that the way of achieving MCIPs gives us the same qualification as exams, please? Uh and she said, Um, you're right, Ofcorps will only accept one qualification with the same or similar learning outcomes on the qualification framework. Corporate award is mapped 100% to the SIPS qualification to enable it to be accredited by SIPS. Therefore, we cannot put it on the QCF as it has the same learning outcomes. However, SIPS is an awarding body in its own right and therefore can regulate the corporate award and so and does so with rigor as SIPS is regulated as an awarding body by OfQL. The two qualifications lead to the same membership status, diploma or full membership MCIP status. So that the diploma is if you're doing the practitioner, and the MCPs is if you're doing the advanced practitioner. So hope that clears everything up. That kind of confused me a little bit, but basically it is it is MCIPs. You you get MCPs from either, and they're both they're both um accredited.

SPEAKER_01: 10:21

I have no reason to doubt that. Ignore the haters, you know. If you want to take the easy route, do it. I don't blame you.

SPEAKER_00: 10:29

He hates it, he does hate this. Well, I'm about to show you um that it's not necessarily the easy route, probably easier overall, but it's not not as easy as this guy likes to make out. So uh what we're gonna talk about today is how I'm getting on with my corporate award, advanced practitioner level. Uh, where as a recap to where I am, I've currently submitted four assignments for five modules. Um the first three were three thousand, the first three modules were three separate reports, all three thousand words, modules four and five were combined in a six thousand-word report, and now I'm on to my sixth module, fifth assignment, which is um the last one that I've got to do. So just to recap again, this one is about project and program change management. Um, there's not a question set in the same way as there are for other exams. It doesn't say, you know, this is your task and this is the things you have to write about. You have to come up with your own sort of title, I suppose, your own project proposal.

SPEAKER_01: 11:55

Like a dissertation title.

SPEAKER_00: 11:57

Exactly, yeah. So it's 10,000 words long, which I believe is less than dissertation, right? Most uh longer, you tell me. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01: 12:05

No, shorter, I think I think that's shorter, but not not by a long shot. I think they're not good.

unknown: 12:09

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:11

Yeah. Uh and what I what I had to do for that, if I can find the notes that I prepared earlier. So I had to come up with a project proposal, as I said, um which kind of has to be based around the obviously, obviously based around procurement. Um there needs to be a central a central kind of focus, and that that should be kind of reflected um in the in the SIPS learning that you've done up to this point. You need to come up with some aims for the project. Uh, you need to do some sort of research into it in terms of like, are you gonna are you gonna look at secondary data from online or are you gonna look at primary data and do uh interviews or surveys and things like that? Um and it needs to be um viable within your company, which I'll come on to a bit later on. So SIPS provide a sample project, which of which the title is improving contract management within the facilities management category at JoeBlogs Group. So you can see there that it's it's about changing something, it's about project and program change management, and it's uh it's also about contract management, which is part of the procurement cycle. And you also gotta relate it back to your company, as with all the assignments, you've got to relate it back to how things work in your company. Um so what my uh shall I do what my one is first or shall I say about viability?

SPEAKER_01: 14:11

I think the last the last episode we had was discussing what potential topic options, right?

SPEAKER_00: 14:17

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 14:19

Um so so yeah, that that's I guess what what is the viability metric just just briefly, because we did I think we did we did discuss that in the last episode, but if you can just recap for any any new listeners or those of us with short-term memory?

SPEAKER_00: 14:34

Yeah, so the the viability asks nine questions. Nine's the magic number. Uh the questions are is it a significant business opportunity? Are there clear outcomes and benefits? Is it within your control? Does it conflict with the strategy? Is it realistic in scope and ambition? Does it enhance procurement credibility? Is it a significant challenge? Is it fresh uh is it fresh exper does it give you a fresh experience, sorry? And does it give a clear success measure and is ownership clear?

SPEAKER_01: 15:17

Okay. Kind of makes sense, but probably easier to write and and easier to say than actually do in reality.

unknown: 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:24

Depending on your company's size and shape and what's actually going on.

SPEAKER_00: 15:29

I think they asked these questions and they they ask uh one of your well, they asked for a line manager um to to sign it off, basically. They they asked, yeah, they asked for your line manager to to say, yeah, approve I approve that these things are right. Um and I think that's because the whole kind of purpose of the corporate award is to make you a better procurement professional in relation to the organization. Everything it asks you to do is like apply this back to your company or say how say how this works in your company, or even if this doesn't work in your company, how could it be improved? Yeah. And you probably remember that for my my last assignment that I submitted was partially about category management, and my sort of outcome on that was this is what category management is, but it doesn't work or it wouldn't work for my company, and that's why my company is not structured in that way.

SPEAKER_01: 16:37

Okay, see where this is potentially going.

SPEAKER_00: 16:42

So my project proposal that I had to submit to SIPS and also get approved by by SIPS as well. It's quite a long title, so bear with. Have I told you what it is yet? I don't think I have told you what it is. Um so it's enhancing stakeholder engagement through procurement efficiency, process automation, and behavioral insights within my company. So there's the the main thing, it's it's generally about enhancing stakeholder engagement. Yeah. And then the three sort of threads that I'm gonna try and use to do that is procurement efficiency, process automation, and behavioral insights, which is like basic basically behavioral psychology of the procurement team. Of the stakeholders, stakeholders. Well, potentially both, but I was thinking about it from the perspective of like how can we frame things in a different way to make stakeholders engage more with us in procurement.

SPEAKER_01: 17:54

Okay, I like that. There's definitely challenges with that, so yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 18:00

I think I think it might be my initial thoughts on it are that it could be it could be too broad. There's quite a lot of things to write about. Um as in behavioural psychology is a massive topic, procurement efficiency is a pretty big topic. Obviously, process automation and AI is becoming a massive thing as well. Uh, I'm potentially worried that I will have too much to write about and I will end up not going into enough detail and not being specific enough. That's me having literally not wrote a single word of the assignment so far.

SPEAKER_01: 18:41

Not surprised, it's probably due tomorrow as well.

SPEAKER_00: 18:44

So, this is the other hard thing about it is that it's due. Well, so I had to submit this proposal document in June, end of June, and I got it back a couple of weeks later from SIPS, and it's not due until the final deadline's in December, mid-December. So it's kind of like it's really hard to motivate yourself to do anything on it because it's just like I've got a lot of months to do it. Um but it's a lot of words, mate. It's a lot of words, don't you? Well, yeah, and the good thing is that we have to book on to um regular one-to-one sessions with a project tutor. This uh this lady called Sandra, she's an expert on on uh on these assignments, and she has kind of meetings with everyone to to go through their topics. Um so I had one in early August, I think, and I've got one uh next week, which will be mid-September. I don't know if yeah. There's a and there's a few things like so we call they're they're called the the August one's called P1, September one is called P2, and then the next one's called P3, I don't know when that is, but we agree that when I okay, this is P1, when I see you at P2, this is what you will have done. Um like for example, I have got to start my secondary data, uh secondary research, so look through spend data and company policies, things like that. I've got to have started my stakeholder mapping. I've got to have um done sort of a skeleton outline of how I want to structure it, those type of things by the time I come back to her next next week.

SPEAKER_01: 20:41

Okay, so yeah, that's good. She's setting the bar. Do you think we can get her on an episode?

SPEAKER_00: 20:46

Eventually. Yeah, maybe I could I can ask. You can always ask, can't you? And see what they uh see what they do. So to to go back to the the project proposal, I want your as a as a M-Sips man, I want your thoughts on um on where I can go with this or or just I guess your general thoughts. So my sort of aim of the the project is to use procurement efficiency, process automation, and behavioural insights as a means to improve stakeholder relationships and therefore the engagement that we're getting as a procurement team, right?

unknown: 21:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 21:32

So communication is obviously gonna be a big big thing. Uh are you planning on combining some of those to using AI to improve communications or whatever?

SPEAKER_00: 21:43

Yeah, I don't see why not. I think I think there's gonna be quite a bit of overlap between process automation and procurement efficiency.

SPEAKER_01: 21:52

Yeah, because that's your solution, isn't it? Surely. Yeah, yeah. Probably one of them helps. Yeah, one of them helps the other one out, so kind of yeah. It's gonna be interesting because it will be specific to your organization and the challenges you've got with stakeholders as well. So I'd probably say you need to be mindful and calling out what those particular issues are, because to say it's quite easy to say, yes, there's we've got stakeholder management problems, um, but every company's got stakeholder management problems. But what what are the real stakeholders? Is it is it finance, is it, is it legal?

SPEAKER_00: 22:29

Um yeah, so so what I've sort of defined so far as the problem is um if there's bad stakeholder engagement or no stakeholder engagement as in from the the stakeholders don't engage with us in time, when we become involved late, we're reactive and we potentially delay the process. Whereas if we'd if we'd been involved earlier, we could have contributed an added value, right? So some sort of value leakage from being involved late.

SPEAKER_01: 23:10

So I don't know if I like the word leakage, but yeah. Um so is it always late involvement that you see as the the main issue with stakeholders?

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

Potentially, yeah. That's well that's that would be the biggest thing, yeah. The biggest thing would be involved being involved late.

SPEAKER_01: 23:32

One of the things that always I think is the behavioural insights is understanding of stakeholders. So, for example, we touched on a couple of departments uh like a second ago, but finance, you don't never talk to your finance colleague during month end, it's just a golden rule. Um obviously, month end happens every month, and that's their busy period where they've got to focus on the work that's core to them and and kind of what they do. So if you know that, how can you factor that into the way that you manage their approvals and their their guidance? The other the other thing we said was leak legal, and every well, I've not met a company yet that doesn't have uh lots of work for lawyers and not enough lawyers to do the work. So, how can we how can we use our knowledge, our time, our skill sets, our systems to basically put things on a plate for legal and improve how quickly they can turn things around? Um, because quite often we we jump at other people and say, look, it's the it's the business not getting out to us quick enough, but equally are we giving other people the right information or the all the or the proper you know correct stuff? So it's just my my two pence worth there, mate.

SPEAKER_00: 24:45

Nice. You're worth more than two pence, mate. I I'll tell you that first of all. Thank you. So I think what I've got to do now, and this is only gonna be a short episode, um, but what I've got to do now is just basically pick up a few of the things that I've got to do for P2. Um and I think what I'm gonna struggle with is how I'm gonna structure it. Um because I'm one of the people that like I need to see, I need to sort of see how it works. Yeah. Before I under Yeah, I need to see how it works before I understand how it works. Um, so trying to understand how it's gonna be structured before I've even written it. It's gonna be different. But again, that's gonna help me with writing it, isn't it? So maybe I should look at it in a more positive way.

SPEAKER_01: 25:37

Yeah, maybe just start writing down what you think of the the subject headings or the the titles and then go from there.

SPEAKER_00: 25:44

Yeah, and and I think the good the good thing about this one is well, I say that now, I probably won't be saying it in a couple of months' time, but I've sort of picked things that I'm relatively interested in. That's how I kind of came up with it. I wanted to do something on stakeholder engagement because because that's you know, that's a big obviously a massive topic in procurement and it's something I find relatively interesting.

SPEAKER_01: 26:10

Yeah, yeah, relatively. So what I says is you don't find it that interesting, but on the grand scheme of procurement stuff, it's it's up there.

SPEAKER_00: 26:19

Yeah, yeah, like like if you'd have if you'd have uh told me I had to write about contract management, or I know Caitlin, who we had on a previous episode, she she did the corporate award as well. She wrote about category management. Um she wrote about the implementation of category management, I think. Um I mean the episode with her was quite interesting, but I don't think I'd want to read that whole 10,000-word report from her. Sorry, Damon.

SPEAKER_01: 26:52

I'll just stick to the conversation. I think the conversation was fine, but yeah, I wouldn't wouldn't really read that to be honest. Probably wouldn't even open it.

SPEAKER_00: 27:01

Did you read the title and go, nah, you're alright? Yeah, you're alright, mate. Maybe oh maybe that's what I should have. Maybe she that's how she got a good a good mark. Is she just like wrote a really boring title and the assessor opened it and went Yeah, let's just let's just give this one a pass.

SPEAKER_01: 27:19

Maybe or maybe she brings something that I've not yet seen from you. Passion she's full of passion, Caitlin is, and that really resonates with the way she talks.

SPEAKER_00: 27:35

And and uh she she's very driven.

SPEAKER_01: 27:41

Exactly, and this you know you could take a leaf out of her book, really.

SPEAKER_00: 27:44

Um yeah, didn't we say this in the last episode or in the episode with her? It was like be more like Caitlin or something. I was trying to talk about um these are things that I'm relatively interested in stakeholder engagement, uh efficiency, automation, and behavioural science, psychology type stuff. So that's kind of how I came up with it. I thought if I'm gonna write 10k words about about something, I'll try and you know make it something that there's a lot of content out there to write about or to use to write, and also make it something that I don't mind looking into.

SPEAKER_01: 28:23

Also, it's it's uh a relatively hot topic, I think, some of those, so your company is more likely to buy into the fact that you're doing that and kind of consent to you doing a project, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00: 28:38

In in theory, you're you're meant to actually implement this as a project, but in reality, like on paper, you you'd say if I was to implement this, then I would do XYZ. But in reality, if there was absolutely no changes that happened as a result of it, you wouldn't fail. But I think the idea that is that you create this, show it to your bosses, and and then they go, Oh, actually that's a really good idea. Let's you know, let's start. I think someone in my in my uh cohort is doing something about changing their fleet company fleet cars from petrol to electric. How that would how that would and you can see you can see the bosses looking at that and going, yeah, actually, you know, they've done the research, they've done the maths, they've done the cost analysis or whatever they need to do. Let's go, let's go and do it.

SPEAKER_01: 29:28

Yeah, or they'll go, but electric cars are shy. I love my little petrol car that I get from the company, so not doing anything. But yeah, no, no, I get that. That's quite easy to relate to, isn't it? I mean, do you think your management will buy into the the work you're doing? I suppose they probably have, haven't they, because they've signed it off.

SPEAKER_00: 29:46

But yeah, it's been it's been signed off. Um I don't know. I guess it depends on what my kind of summary is, right, and how I present it as to whether it will be you know implemented um but yeah I suppose it's a kind of it's not a it's not a formal implementation is it nothing there is it's not like a switch if you think about the the types of change there's a model for you Balogun's types of change it's not a it's not just like a big we're switching from one thing to another it's sort of like we should start doing these types of things which will hopefully result in a slow gradual change to this type of behaviour.

SPEAKER_01: 30:30

Yeah well if only we knew a behavioural psychologist who could potentially give you some advice I did listen to the Johnti the other day the Johnti psychology and procurement episode which I believe is series two episode five if anyone wants to watch that or listen to that no way you know that by heart that's so sad but I love it. I listened to it two days ago I asked Copilot to do a summary of it and it came up with in season two episode five the Luke's talk to Johnti a behavioral psychologist so we are known we're known by Copilot I was I was impressed with that yeah that's we're big leagues we're big leagues if uh copilot knows us and if you want to make us any bigger make our heads inflated and ego inflated then uh we'd appreciate if you could drop us a a five star review on the platform of your listening um that would really help us out and also what would help us out and give us some motivation is to email us at our email address two luke's onesip at gmail.com that's number two luke's blur or the number onecip at gmail.com we also have a text us function which is in the description of every episode so slide into our DMs from there and if your comments good enough it could be featured on our website which is www.letstalkprocurement dot co.uk and yes it's dotco uk because I'm cheap and I didn't want to pay for.com nice see you later see you later do we have to fade the talk out now as we're back in the pub uh are we up to the bar for another round what you have in a cup of tea please considering it is like 10am pub's not even opened yet but yeah I'll have a I'll have a cup of tea cheers maybe we should do cheers instead of see you later yeah I like that what um what pub are we in today?

SPEAKER_00: 32:44

That's what we should do seventeen octopuses.

SPEAKER_01: 32:50

Yeah you were thinking of the same pub I was then and then you just you came up with something along the lines of it.

SPEAKER_00: 32:56

I was thinking of the three Welsh birds how many how many limbs do they have though? Your wings count as a limb