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The Future of Sourcing
Marketforce’s Conference: From intelligent procurement to sustainable partnerships: sharing outsourcing best practice
Speaker interviews
Interview with Margaret Gibson: Head of Procurement at Standard Life:Prior to Standard Life, Margaret spent over twenty years in various global Procurement roles in the Financial Services, Pharmaceutical and Manufacturing sectors. Margaret also has also worked in Human Resources and Finance within other Financial Services organisations. |
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How is procurement structured at Standard Life?
Standard Life has centralised it's strategic procurement operation on a global basis. The centralised team sets Policy for the entire group. All Procure to Pay activities are undertaken by the Finance function. We have small localised procurement teams in our overseas businesses.
What's the biggest challenge in your role?
The biggest challenge is retaining a current working knowledge of the market opportunities especially given the speed of technological advancements.
How can outsourcing be used to drive business growth?
By allowing our organisation to focus on core activities and using third parties to provide specialised services we can benefit from their economies of scale. In the medium term this should lead to an improved speed to market.
How do you see the role of the procurement department changing? Should procurement be outsourced?
The role of Procurement operations has changed dramatically over the past few years. The role of the FSA in regulating Financial Services activities has led to an increased scrutiny on how we manage our third parties. The Procurement function plays a key role in mitigating third party risk. Outsourcing the function may in itself introduce further unpalatable risk to any organisation.
What is the most valuable achievement of your career?
The most valuable achievement was in my career was, in a previous role and organisation, to be given the opportunity to shape a Procurement function where none existed.
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