Former Chief Procurement Officer for Fujitsu, the global technology business, Guy Allen now works as a consultant helping small and large businesses transform and achieve excellent results with SRM.

Relatively new to his role in Rolls Royce and a new speaker at ProcureCon, Robin Balderstone is responsible for all purchasing processes and tools across Rolls Royce Plc including BPO in Purchasing. His role means he continuously delivers process and tool support across all Rolls Royce regions and is currently working to deliver a 20% reduction in supplier overhead costs in the next 2 years.

Richard Beaumont recently took up the role of Head of Procurement at Co-Op Bank, part of the Co-Op Group currently undergoing massive transformation. Richard's background includes serving as an officer in the British Army, holding a senior position at McKinsey and before Co-Op as head of transformation at Rolls Royce.

Didier Bonnefon currently works at Danone as the Sourcing and Supplier Development Manager for Ingredients managing a team of category managers. Didier has over 8 years’ experience providing in-company training at global corporations in the automotive, energy and banking sectors as well as teaching procurement methodology at Masters level in MIP (Spain) and Universidad Adolfo Ibanez (Chile).

Duncan has over 25 years consulting and procurement experience as a change driver working with senior executives and procurement leadership teams in the design and mobilisation of business-wide processes in category management and supplier relationship management. His procurement experience comes from working with Ford, Mars, Black & Decker, NTL, and R&SA, where he has personally had direct line accountability for expenditure in excess of £2bn in both production (direct) and indirect categories. During his 10 years as a senior consultant with both QP Group and Future Purchasing he has successfully implemented category management, and developed the skills and capabilities of procurement teams, in a number of clients such as Diageo, Barclays & Nestlé.

Mário Cardoso is an International Business Developer at GATEWIT, an IT company specialized in Procurement platforms. With more than 15 years of professional experience, Mario is focused on helping companies across industries discover potential business value through deploying technology, specifically within e-Procurement. He has a degree in Marketing and Advertising and a Master Degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation Management. Previously he was a university teacher lecturing Marketing, Economy, Project Management and Computer Sciences at Lusófona University.
 
Mário was a member of the research team in the iDTV HEALTH PROJECT and responsible of SMART TV development team. Mario managed projects such as CIAKL and CIAKL II, a European Program Fund for Entrepreneurship development within the IT sector.
 

Professor Tim Cullen leads the Negotiation course at the Said Business School, Oxford University drawing on his career as an academic to bring together proven strategies and the latest thinking for rivetting content and new perspectives on strategic leadership.

New to ProcureCon Christina de Luca oversees BP's $15 billion annual spend by its Refining division, a role that keeps her away from the UK much of the year and takes her around the world to BP's multiple sites. One of Christina's passions, for diversity in leadership, will be a key item in this year's programme taking shape in the 'Divesity in Leadership' panel on November 3.

As President of Cost & Compliance Associates, LLC, Bob brings his diverse expertise in the areas of operations and consulting to our work. His experience includes delivery of large-scale process improvement and systems implementation engagements across a variety of operations-intensive industries, including Energy, Chemicals, Automotive, Resources and Life Sciences, among others.

Beginning his career in manufacturing management at General Motors, Bob went on to hold various consulting positions in the areas of supply chain improvement and organization transformation. At Arthur D. Little, he had a global role relative to the Operations and Information Management functional practices. He served as the integration “point-person” with eleven global industry practice leaders. Earlier in his career, at Coopers & Lybrand, Bob executed consulting engagements involving manufacturing: strategy, systems and operations across a variety of industries.

 Previously Connolly’s Commercial Division leader, Bob is currently a eleven-year industry veteran. During that time he has driven an expansion of both our service offerings and geographic coverage. He has a passion for assisting our clients to leverage the discoveries and learning from our work to improve business performance.

Bob holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Illinois and an MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia.

As head of procurement for the world's biggest drinks business Thibaut has a truly global role. Part of his responsibility is to explore the possibilities presented by low cost country sourcing and operating models in emerging markets including those in Africa. Drawing on his recent experiences Thibaut will be sharing insight this year about sourcing locally for competitive advantage in South Africa.

No stranger to ProcureCon Jamie Foster heads up the relatively young procurement team at Hitachi's Rail business in Europe. Jamie's role includes building an entire procurement organisation from scratch with a huge budget to compete quickly in a new market for Hitachi. This unusual combination of factors makes Jamie's view unique.

Alasdair Fraser is part of the British Library's Senior Leadership team. Responsible for Procurement strategy and compliance for £50 million spend on goods and services, with additional project and capital spend. Focus on value for money and supplier performance in a range of industry sectors. Involved in the supply management of all goods, services and capital projects including innovative collection digitisation partnerships, construction of new state of the art storage facilities, collaborative contracts with UK Museums, Galleries ( including the British Museum and the Tate ) and Universities, exhibitions and Facilities Management Services. Alasdair has 25 years in procurement, an MBA and MCIPS  with experience in the public sector including Central Government and the National Health Service, Head of Contracts at Leeds Teaching Hospitals, as well as contracts for Save the Children Fund and overseas Consultant for Department of International Development. 

Michael Gates, an Associate Fellow of the Said Business School, is a key teacher in the Oxford Programme on Negotiation at the Said Business School, Oxford University. Michael, who is an excellent speaker, is one of the world's leading experts on cross-cultural communication and negotiation.

Paula Gildert currently heads up the sourcing development office for Novartis Pharma reporting to the Chief Procurement Officer and managing a team of hundreds of procurement and sourcing experts worldwide. In her role she oversees transformation, which at a team level means completely changing attitudes to business partnership and supplier relationship management. Working alongside a consultant Paula is leading sourcing professionals outside their comfort zone to develop different skills beyond the technical to make true breakthroughs in performance and relationships happen that deliver superior outcomes.

 

 Marco Gonçalves has more than thirty years of professional experiencein multinationals, fast moving consumer goods companies, of which more thantwenty years in senior positions with focus in Supply Chain management,including Procurement, Distribution and Logistics. His professional experience iscomplemented by senior positions in Marketing, Sales, Strategic Planning andInformation Technology. He joined Nestlé in 2008 inSwitzerland as Vice President, Corporate Head of Procurement - Commodities,responsible for sourcing and price risk management of agricultural commodities.

Marco was appointed Senior VicePresident and Group Head of Procurement in March 2013 being part of the NestléOperations Leadership team.  He served as Board Director atLAAD (Latin America Agribusiness Development Corporation), President of theProcurement Strategic Council at the American Chamber of Commerce SP, andDirector Best Practices CBEC (Brazilian Council of Procurement Executives) from2006 to 2008.  Marco is a technical accountantwith a degree in business management (Sao Paulo, Brazil).  He attendedthe Executive Development Program at IMD 2010-2011 (Lausanne, Switzerland).

In 2014 Nina ran a breakfast meeting for CPOs on 'Women in Procurement' raising important questions about how corporations need to change to reflect more balanced leadership teams. This year Nina will again add value to the discussion as well as lead a roundtable discussion to engage attendees in how they can create more diverse leadership teams.

Sari Hakkarainen has been responsible for procurement at VAASAN, one of the most significant bakery operators in Northern Europe, since October 2013 and a member of VAASAN Group management team since. Before VAASAN Sari acted as Procurement Director for Terveystalo, the largest healthcare service company in Finland, establishing centrally led procurement function at Terveystalo. Prior to Terveystalo Sari held various positions in procurement, logistics, business development and manufacturing at Fazer, HUB logistics, Nextrom and Andritz-Ahlstrom.

Professor John Henke is a recognized expert on supplier relationships publishing some of the most anticipated reports in the world on supplier profitability, from which he will be sharing insights at ProcureCon this year. Professor Henke is currently Professor of Marketing at Oakland University, Research Fellow, Center for Supply Chain Management, Rutgers University and consults for Planning Perspectives.

Lawyer by training, business leader and procurement expert Rick Hughes has amassed a wealth of experience leading the biggest consumer goods corporation in the world, Procter and Gamble, managing over $50 billion spend and a global team of 1000+.

Simon Hurst is Principal Solutions Consultant, working with new clients of Xoomworks to determine the right solutions to make them successful.  Simon’s work at a recent client helped to elevate their procurement and finance processes to ‘World Class’ as recognised by Hackett.

Edzard Janssen is a German national with 12 years in senior management positions in procurement of Deutsche Telekom Group, in Head Office or leading Procurement of major business units. For the past 6 years he has been in procurement at Raiffeisen Bank International rising to serve the business now as Group Chief Procurement Officer and Head of Group Cost Management reporting to the board member for Retail, IT and Operations. In this role Edzard is also responsible for Procurement of RBI HO/Business Unit Austria, cost Management in the Group and Austria and for leading the group-wide corporate savings programme “Fit for Future”.

Henrik Larsen is Vice President of Sourcing and Indirect Procurement in the A.P. Moller – Group. The team consists of +100 employees across 7 locations worldwide. The Sourcing team assists all Business Units with a wide range of projects, always using our six sourcing steps to make sure the process is structured and professional. Indirect covers a great variety of areas from Travel, Corporate Real Estate Management to IT and Professional Services. Henrik is passionate about talent creation, a topic he will be sharing experiences and new ideas on during his keynote session morning of November 4.

Lewis Love is currently Global Chief Procurement Officer for Aon, a world leading insurer and household brand in most markets around the world. Lewis also heads up the Corporate Real Estate division in Aon. A lawyer by trade Lewis has spent much of his career in the banking sector and served as Group Treasurer at the Bank of Ireland before taking on the top procurement job at Aon.

As Global Head of Procurement Infrastructure James has consolidated core expertise from within procurement by establishing supporting service lines such as Market Intelligence, Risk Management and Analytics. He is also responsible for the development and implementation of the underlying procurement processes and systems. With a bias towards simplification and a technologist at heart James is always searching for new trends and products in the market to provide innovative solutions back into the procurement function. Most recent focus has included implementation of dynamic Business Intelligence Dashboards and the adoption of SalesForce to manage all operational procurement activity within the organisation.

Martin joined QinetiQ as Director of Procurement in 2011. In this role, Martin is responsible for the end to end management of contracts and relationships with QinetiQ’s third party suppliers, and for delivering a best-in-class procurement service to all operating divisions. During the three years in post, Martin has transformed Procurement from tactical buying into Strategic Sourcing, consolidating a number of previously disparate procurement functions into a single organisation, and built a sustainable capability fit for both today’s and tomorrow’s challenges.

Andrea Sordi is currently responsible for indirect procurement in Europe for one of the world’s leading consumer goods businesses, Mondelez International. His main focuses today are on completely reinventing the Indirects Procurement to become Best in Class in delivery and sustainability; improving ways of working across the business through organization re-design; and talent development. Andrea has been contributing to ProcureCon for more than 3 years and serves as one of the event advisors this year.

Anna Spinelli currently manages Philips' 3+ billion euro commodity spend for its lighting division, one of 3 main business divisions in Philips. Anna is passionate about building long-lasting relationships and will bring to the conference this November recent experiences using negotiation and other skills to create stronger supplier partnerships that are benefiting Philips.

Frank Thorsen is a senior Purchasing Director with extensive experience within Global Procurement and Supply Chain Management. He is also experienced in creating best-in-class Purchasing Organizations with strong capabilities within Category Management and the understanding of commodity markets, their different dynamics and the correlation between business cycles and commodity markets, and he has industry leading capabilities in working with commercial teams in order to optimize Marketing and Sales strategies

No stranger to ProcureCon Remko won an award in 2013 for services to procurement in recognition of the work he does in collaboration with academic institutions to further the procurement professions. This year Remko will return to give another 'state of the industry' address.

Marc Vollenweider is the CEO and Co-founder of Evalueserve. He founded Evalueserve in December 2000, after spending a decade with McKinsey & Co (including two years as a Principal in Switzerland and India). Prior to starting Evalueserve, Marc established McKinsey Knowledge Centre in Gurgaon, India and grew it from 14 to 120 professionals between 1999 and end of 2000. Evalueserve now has more than 2,600 employees worldwide and knowledge centres in Gurgaon (India); Shanghai (China); Viña del Mar (Chile); and Cluj (Romania).

Marc has vast consulting experience in various industries such as Telecom, Pharmaceuticals/Healthcare, Banking, Insurance, Steel, Transportation and Logistics around the world. He can be termed as a person who can live anywhere in world, learn the best of cultural, social and practical aspects, and work with people from various backgrounds to achieve a common objective. Marc has spoken at many events over the last few years, and is regularly quoted on TV and print media as an Offshoring/Outsourcing Industry specialist. He is particularly renowned and much sought-after for his conference presentations on the future of BPO and KPO (Knowledge Process Offshoring).

Marc graduated from INSEAD, France, in 1991 with a Master’s in Business Administration (M.B.A.). He also holds a Master’s degree in Telecommunications Engineering (M. Tech.) from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich.

Marcell Vollmer was born in 1970 and holds a PhD in politics as well as a degree in business administration. He is currently Chief Procurement Officer and Senior Vice President of the Global Procurement Organization (GPO) at SAP AG. GPO has approx. 220 people and deals with a global spend volume of more than 3.6bn EUR (Full Year 2013). In his role Marcell is also the business owner for the end-to-end Procure-to-Pay Process.

Since he has joined SAP in 2004 Marcell was driving as Global Vice President Finance global strategic programs for SAP, like the set-up, expansion and globalization of shared services, the post-merger-integration of Sybase and Business Objects (3rd largest IT acquisition at this time) as well as reorganization and cash flow optimization programs.
 
Before joining SAP, he worked for DHL Express as a manager of several integration projects in Finance, Controlling and HR (Payroll and Controlling during the integration of DHL, Danzas into Deutsche Post), the centralization of the customer service center organization and the integration of the European Sales force.

In addition, he has worked as a management consultant and project lead for a call center centralization project in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, a telesales center in Lower Saxony, Germany and founded a transportation company and mail-order business in Hamburg, Germany.

Professor Constantin Blome recently took over as Professor of Operations Management at the University of Sussex in the the School of Business, Management and Economics. He also holds a part-time post at the Université catholique de Louvain as GSK Vaccines Chair Professor of Strategic Sourcing and Procurement. Passionate about innovation in procurement Professor Blome will be leading a customized workshop for CPOs and senior sourcing leaders onsite this year, focusing on how to create innovation through procurement on November 4.

Mario Cardoso is a specialist in the areas of marketing, communication, creative business and technology.

As a highly proficient consultant in negotiation and project management and as a University professor too Mario is well placed to offer you the latest thinking in intelligence sourcing and risk management and answer all your questions on the subjects too

Giuseppe has recently moved from Procurement to Supply Chain at Merck Serono to take a Global role in the area of Contract Manufacturing in Pharma. Previously he was Global Procurement Director Services at Firmenich and held several Procurement leadership roles at Procter & Gamble (9 years) and Novartis (5.5 years). He has worked in 5 different countries.

Giuseppe is also the founder of Conti Advanced Business Learning, a company that specialises in Advanced Negotiation and Influencing workshops. He offers custom workshops to several leading multinationals across Europe and Asia and he is a regular lecturer at top-ranked European Business Schools, including Cambridge, ESADE, HEC Geneva, HEC Paris, IMD, INSEAD, Oxford, RSM, and SDA Bocconi. Managers from over 70 different countries have attended his highly interactive and pragmatic workshops.He is a member of the ProcureCon Advisory Board since 2011.

LarsJohan Froyland leads the procurement team at Norway's West Health Service, oneof Norway's biggest employers with more than 30,000 people currently employed.In this role he has managed to dramatically improve category management and isnow focusing on improving adoption of technology.

Melani Wilson Smith is the Procurement Leader for North America & Global Gum and Candy at Mondelēz International. In this role, Melani leads a team with accountability for strategic sourcing across Ingredients, Packaging, Commodities and Indirect Procurement. She is accountable for business alignment, sourcing strategy, supplier selection and performance management and the source to pay process. Melani’s career has spanned Procurement in the consumer goods, financial services and pharmaceutical industries; her experience includes extensive domestic and international assignments, as both a corporate representative and as a supply chain consultant. Before coming to Mondelēz International, Melani worked for Merck & Co. Inc, Procter & Gamble, Pfizer, Inc. and QP Group, LLC, a leading supply chain consulting firm, practicing in the United States; London, England; and Geneva, Switzerland. Her core belief and practice is that Procurement delivers competitive advantage and breakthrough results through close alignment to the business and a focus on people and performance.

Toby has been with Efficio since 2005 and has over 20 years of experience in operations consulting with a particular focus on procurement and supply chain optimisation.  He has worked within a number of sectors including financial Services, retail, manufacturing, infrastructure and private equity.  Over the past few years he has worked extensively within global financial services companies and utility companies helping them to transform their procurement organisations to deliver a step change in both cost optimisation as well as people skills and organisation improvement.  Prior to this, he held a number of commercial buying roles for UK and international retailers. Toby holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business and Statistics from the University of Hertfordshire.
“I believe that Efficio is leading the way in supporting clients to deliver long-lasting change in procurement. Going beyond optimising cost to stretching our clients thinking and supporting them to make a longer-term change to the skills and effectiveness of the overall procurement function.  We help procurement departments to add significant value to the bottom line of a business.”