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CIPS新总裁Malcolm Harrison访谈录

 

Malcolm Harrison: “Successful procurement doesn't operate by mandate alone”  ©Peter Spinney

Malcolm Harrison: “Successful procurement doesn't operate by mandate alone” ©Peter Spinney

CIPS新总裁Malcolm Harrison访谈录

作者:Katie Jacobs

 

马尔科姆•哈里森(Malcolm Harrison)将离开皇冠商业服务处(Crown Commercial Service),加盟CIPS,担任首席执行官。他告诉《供应管理》杂志的记者为什么,以及他的职业生涯如何让他准备好迎接这一新的挑战。

在马尔科姆·哈里森35年的职业生涯中,他曾制作玛氏巧克力棒,在Bass Brewers公司进行专业化采购,作为多种商品采购和销售团队一员而创建了AB InBev,为雀巢在全球进行采购,并担任了Rexam全球塑料包装业务的首席执行官。

2015年,他转到公共部门任职,加入政府采购机构皇冠商业服务处(CCS),担任顾问,并于2016年成为该机构CEO。在2018年7月底,他承担了CIPS集团CEO这一富有挑战的角色。

“我职业生涯的大部分时间都是在私人部门组织,但公共部门采购也是我职业生涯的一个重要组成部分,并坚信在采购职业中技能和能力特别重要;现在有机会把所有这些结合在一起,来领导本行业内一家卓越的专业协会,真是一个极好的机会。” 哈里森告诉《供应管理》杂志的记者。

Harrison的背景意味着他为CIPS的CEO角色带来了丰富的经验,无论是作为采购专业人员还是在职能之外的业务领导。他在玛氏的第一份工作是在制造业,后来他转到“供应部门”。

他反思道:“我很快就了解到,采购完全取决于如何匹配供求关系。”“我的主要职责是识别需求,与内部客户合作,确保他们明确自己需要什么,而不是想要什么。另一方面是了解供应市场。这是关于你如何将两者结合起来,并提供最佳资金价值。”

在玛氏担任了近11年的各种职位——不仅是采购,还包括销售和物流——之后,他离开了玛氏,成为Bass Brewers公司的首位采购主管,这是他领导转型的第一次经历。他回忆道,“我接手了一个由三个人组成的团队,他们名义上负责购买一切。我问他们有多少供应商,花了多少钱,他们不确定。答案是23312家供应商,我永远不会忘记这个数字,花费约7.5亿英镑,而他们曾认为这是6亿英镑。”

在接下来的四年里,他建立了这个职能部门,在进入一般管理领域之前,他学会了“让合适的人、合适的技能,来担任合适的角色”的重要性。

他在采购之外的任职经历教会了他什么?“其他人如何看待采购。获得采购之外的经验是培训成为优秀的采购领导者的最好方法之一。你会有更广阔的视野,更清楚地看到采购运作的一些困难。”

他还了解到沟通技巧是多么重要:“当你运行多个职能部门时,关键是你如何以连贯一致的方式进行沟通,这样你的信息才不会被误解。”

管理增长

如果没有人联系哈里森加入当时名为Interbrew的公司,他很可能会继续从事一般管理工作。当时Interbrew即将开始一项“非常雄心勃勃的”并购计划,而且该公司没有全球采购职能。

2004年,Interbrew与AmBev合并,创建了全球最大的酿酒商InBev。哈里森估计,在他担任首席采购官的六年时间里,该公司在全球范围内完成了15笔收购和几笔资产处置:“这是多么难以置信的经历:你刚刚把自己的职能部门建立起来,就要在另一个大陆收购了另一家公司。”

这一收购议程再次说明了沟通的重要性。“你总是在兼并新企业,所以你必须让别人接受你。你不能只是以势压人。成功的采购并不是单靠授权进行的,还在于人们看到并感觉到‘这些采购人员会带来价值,帮助我明智地花钱’。”

2006年,他接到了一份“无法拒绝”的工作邀请,并以全球首席采购官的身份加入了雀巢。他表示:“作为全球最大的快速消费品公司,它的工厂分布在80个国家,其复杂程度令人难以置信。这可能是为我进入公共部门做准备的最好的公司之一。雀巢是一个下放了权力的组织,市场掌握着权力,这对采购来说相当具有挑战性:你必须能够让别人认同你所带来的价值。”

在雀巢工作了4年、在英国以外生活了10年之后,他决定回到家乡,重回通用管理岗位,领导“富时100指数(FTSE 100) ”成分股公司Rexam的全球塑料业务。“那是我做过的最好的工作之一,拥有经营企业的全部经历。他被Rexam的董事会要求出售公司,这又给他增加了一项经验。

公共部门和皇冠商业服务处(CCS)也是如此。哈里森表示:“吸引人的是在一个对公民如此重要的行业工作的机会。”但公平地说,这并不是一段轻松的旅程。

CCS是2013年由时任内阁办公室部长弗朗西斯·莫德(Francis Maude)发起的一系列改革的一部分。目的是协调共同商品和服务的采购。当时Maude说CCS将“确保我们的商业能力有一个阶段性的改变”。

然而,国家审计署(National Audit Office)在2016年12月发布的一份报告称,CCS“尚未实现物有所值”,它未能整合或标准化其职权范围内的服务,有时也无法向客户证明自己得到了最好的交易。根据国家审计署,CCS只是管理七个政府部门的花费,比原计划少10个部门;至2016年4月,管理价值25亿英镑的花费,低于预期的80亿英镑。

Harrison认为CCS背后的理念是“做正确的事情”,而最初的执行和运营模式则不是。他说:“现实情况是,为了把它放在合适位置,许多其他活动也被纳入CCS。”“(例如)从用户手中拿走的运营合同管理,被放到一个中央机构,然而,为了管理该合同,必须又交还给用户,这实际上降低了效率。”所以第一年在CCS很多是关注究竟什么是其真正所擅长的:为公共部门的通用商品和服务的采购准备好合适的协议,停止做那些由别人做会更好的许多活动。”

哈里森与内阁办公室常任秘书长约翰·曼佐尼于2017年1月出现在公共账目委员会面前。“面临的挑战是:商业服务的范围是什么,运营模式是什么,以及这种模式如何与一个关于合规的制度相适应?”

合规与商务

在一个难以置信的复杂环境中,平衡合规性和商业化是一个棘手的问题。有18个中央政府部门(其中8个相当于富时250指数成分股公司的规模),哈里森将其比作“为数家富时指数成分股公司设立一个中央采购职能,这些公司各有自己的利益相关者和战略——你必须说服他们接纳【采购】。”

除了中央部门,CCS还服务于更广泛的公共部门,在地方议会、学校和NHS信托机构中运作。对于这些较小的实体来说,关键是“找到一种更‘数字化自助方式’的互动方式”,并朝着服务数字化的方向发展,以使CCS尽可能容易地开展业务。

在担任CCS的CEO期间,哈里森一直致力于建立正确的运营模式,通过四个支柱(设施管理和公用事业、信息技术、专业服务和企业解决方案——“其他一切”)实施品类战略,并引入一个新的领导团队。

此外,为了使中小企业更容易向政府供货,也做了很多工作。他解释道:“我们一直在做大量工作,研究我们的条款和条件、我们的招标程序,并考虑如何在保持合规的同时,消除或简化某些过程。无论你是一家大公司还是中小企业,我都希望能达到这样一个境界:你能以与你的规模相称的方式遵守我们的投标程序。”

CCS的成功经验包括与政府法律部门合作,设立律师小组,以涵盖不同类型的法律活动。这件事花了两年时间才完成,这说明了环境的复杂性。其他的成绩有:皇冠托管数据中心,一个与中小企业合作提供安全数据存储的合资企业,预计将为当地议会提供一个同比效率节约60%的项目,以及一个开放公共部门水市场的项目。第一个公共部门水框架协议汇集了122个单位和4千万英镑的花费,实现平均节省4%,在某些情况下,节约多达10%。

Carillion公司破产的教训

在Carillion公司今年1月倒闭后,公共部门采购一直处于风口浪尖,与Carillion签订了450份公共部门采购合同。约翰·曼卓尼把证据提交给国会议员作为Carillion调查的一部分,最近说:“我们使得各公司频于应付,报价低只是为了赢得合同,部分是因为我们没有做好内部工作而只是要求降低价格。”

对哈里森来说,更大的争论是“如何管理外包”。他说:“你必须能够非常清楚地说明你希望供应商提供什么。这其实很难,因为服务的性质常常变化,有时会根据不同的政治优先事项而改变,而公共部门采购条例更适合采购有明确规格的商品,而不是复杂的服务。你必须提出一个模型,使得在制定规格时允许一定的变更。你可能必须修改规格,从而必须重新对该业务招标,那么如何在公共部门环境中将其体现在合同中呢?这些挑战并不简单。”

“然后是你如何管理合同。Carillion破产带来的问题是,我们需要明确规定服务是什么,确保有适当的风险转移。将风险转移给无法管理风险的人是没有意义的——对我来说,这是规格的一部分。第二点是用更有效、更专业的方式管理这些合同。”

当哈里森准备离开CCS的时候,他承认“这段旅程还没有结束”——他估计到目前为止已经完成了40%——“从很多方面来说,现在离开还为时过早”。但他对采购行业的热情意味着他不能拒绝领导该行业协会的机会。

“这个职业有一些了不起的人,如果作为一个专业团体,我们可以提供技术知识和培训,以提高能力和帮助人们对自己的能力更有信心,并通过这种信心能够提供更多的价值,这将是向前迈出的重要一步,”他说。

他认为,采购行业面临的挑战之一是“让它成为一个有吸引力的职业,让优秀的人才愿意工作”。“我们这些最终从事采购工作的人认为这是一个很棒的地方。但这个职业仍被视为“创造节约的人”,而我认为采购应该被视为“帮助我们明智花钱的人”。那么它就变得更注重价值了。

虽然哈里森认为技术采购技能“很好理解”,但他认为,围绕高级领导需要的技能,则存在一定的认识不足。“给采购主管一套合适的技能,使其成为一名出色的采购总监(CPO),最好的方法是什么?”他问道。“CPO的技能更像是首席销售官或业务部门主管的技能,而不是采购员的技能。我们要做的是,如何让高层人员具备成功所需的技能和经验。”

这是他热切希望在8月份开始的一份事业。为什么,尽管他的职业是一般管理,却无法逃脱采购的诱惑?“范围太广了,”他说。“你总是在应对变化。你永远不知道需求的变化或在供应市场中的变化是什么,然而你必须随之找到一个解决方案。在采购领域,从来没有一个无聊的时刻。”

 

哈里森有五件事离不开

1、步行靴

我喜欢有一个目的地或目标,并克服在我的道路上的任何挑战或坎坷。我喜欢在户外,和家人、朋友、同事在一起。最好的方法就是走路。

2、我的家人和我们的狗的照片

我的家庭对我来说非常重要,也是我为什么要在工作中这么做的一个重要原因——这样我就可以和他们一起享受时光。

3、巧克力棒

我喜欢巧克力。巧克力棒让我想起了我在玛氏的早期职业生涯,尽管那时它被称为马拉松!玛氏是我工作过的最好的公司。我从其环境、原则和人员身上学到了很多东西。

4、《泰晤士报填字游戏》

一个人总是可以学到一些新的东西,填字游戏是一个很好的方法。解决难题就像创造好的供应策略一样复杂。

5、《攀登珠穆朗玛峰》

克里斯·伯宁顿的这本书是关于他1975年攀登珠穆朗玛峰的故事。计划、后勤和团队工作都是我所钦佩的,这与我有限的登山经验和作为一名采购专业人士有关!

 

Malcolm Harrison on his career and becoming CIPS’ new CEO

posted by Katie Jacobs

in Procurement, Public sector, Transformation

 13 July 2018

Malcolm Harrison is leaving the Crown Commercial Service to join CIPS as CEO. He tells SM why, and how his career has prepared him for this new challenge.

 

No one could accuse Malcolm Harrison of sitting still. In his 35-year-plus career, he’s made Mars bars, professionalised procurement at Bass Brewers, been part of the team buying and selling multiple entities to create AB InBev, run procurement globally for Nestlé and been CEO of Rexam’s global plastic packaging business.

In 2015, he made the move to the public sector, joining government buying agency Crown Commercial Service (CCS) as an advisor, before becoming its CEO in 2016. And at the end of July, he takes on the challenging role of group CEO of CIPS.

“Having spent much of my career in private sector organisations, an important part of my career in public sector procurement, and being a believer in the importance of skills and capabilities in the profession, the chance to put all that together and lead the preeminent body within the profession is a fantastic opportunity,” he tells SM when we meet in the heart of Whitehall.

Harrison’s background means he brings a wealth of experience to the CIPS CEO role, both as a procurement professional and business leader outside of the function. His first job at Mars was in manufacturing, before he moved to the “supplies function”.

 “I learnt quickly that procurement was all about how you match up supply and demand,” he reflects. “A big part of my role was about recognising demand, working with internal customers to make sure they were specifying what they needed, not what they wanted. The other side was understanding supply markets. It’s about how you bring the two together and deliver the best value for money.”

After almost 11 years at Mars in a variety of roles – not just procurement but sales and logistics too – he left to become Bass Brewers’ first head of procurement, his first experience of leading transformation. “I inherited a team of three who were notionally responsible for buying everything,” he recalls. “I asked how many suppliers they had, how much they spent, and they weren’t sure. The answer was 23,312 suppliers – I’ll never forget that number – and a spend of about £750m; they thought it was £600m.”

Over the next four years he built the function, learning the importance of “getting the right people, with the right skills, in the right roles”, before moving into general management.

What did his time outside of procurement teach him? “How other people see procurement. Getting experience outside of procurement is one of the best bits of training to be a good leader inside procurement. You get a wider perspective, and see some of the difficulties of operating with procurement much more clearly.”

He also learnt how vital communication skills are: “When you’re running a number of functions, it’s about how you communicate in a consistent and coherent way, so your message isn’t misinterpreted.”  

Managing growth

Harrison probably would have continued on the general management track, if he hadn’t been approached to join what was then Interbrew, a business about to embark on a “very ambitious” M&A plan and without a global procurement function.

Interbrew merged with AmBev to create InBev, the world’s largest brewer, in 2004. Harrison estimates that in his six years there leading procurement, the company completed 15 acquisitions and a few disposals across the globe: “What an incredible experience that was: as soon as you’ve established your function, you bought another company in another continent.”

The acquisition agenda drove home again the importance of communication. “You’re always picking up new businesses, so you’ve got to sell. You can’t just ram [procurement] down people’s throats. Successful procurement doesn’t operate by mandate alone. It operates because people look at it and think ‘these people are going to bring value and help me spend money wisely’.”

In 2006 he was given an offer he “couldn’t refuse”, and joined Nestlé as global CPO. “The biggest FMCG company in the world, with factories in 80 countries, it is unbelievably complex,” he says. “It was probably one of the best companies to prepare me for the public sector. Nestlé is a devolved organisation where the markets hold the power, which is quite challenging for procurement: you’ve got to be able to sell the value you are bringing.”

After four years at Nestlé, and 10 living outside the UK, he decided to return home, and to general management, heading up the global plastics business of FTSE 100 firm Rexam. “That was one of the best jobs I’ve ever done, having the full spectrum of running a business.” He was asked by Rexam’s board to sell the business, adding another string of experience to his bow.

And so to the public sector, and CCS. “What appealed was a chance to work in a sector that has such importance to citizens,” Harrison says. But it’s fair to say it hasn’t exactly been an easy ride.

CCS was established in 2013 as part of a suite of reforms by then Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude. The aim was to coordinate the purchase of common goods and services. At the time Maude said CCS would “ensure a step change in our commercial capability”.

However, a National Audit Office report published in December 2016 said the CCS had “not yet achieved value for money”, that it had failed to integrate or standardise the services brought under its remit, and at times could not demonstrate to its customers that they were getting the best deal. According to the NAO, CCS was only managing the spend of seven government departments, 10 fewer than originally planned, and was managing £2.5bn worth of spend by April 2016, £8bn less than forecast.

Harrison’s belief is that while the concept behind CCS was “the right thing to do”, the original execution and operating model were not. “The reality was, in the desire to get it in place, a lot of other activities got swept up into CCS as well,” he says. “[For example], operational contract management that had been taken away from users and put into a central body, which then had to go to the users in order to manage it – which actually made it less efficient. So a lot of that first year at CCS was about getting the focus on what it is we are really good at: putting in place the right agreements for common goods and services across the public sector, and stopping doing many of the activities that would be far better done by someone else.”

Harrison, with Cabinet Office permanent secretary John Manzoni, appeared in front of the Public Accounts Committee in January 2017. “The challenges were: what was the scope of the commercial service, what was the operating model, and how did that model fit with a regime that was about compliance?”

Compliance v commerce

Balancing compliance and commerciality is a tricky one, in an incredibly complex environment. With 18 central government departments, eight of which are the size of FTSE 250 companies, Harrison likens it to “putting in place a central procurement function for a selection of FTSE companies, who have their own stakeholders and strategies – and you’ve got to sell [procurement] to them.”

In addition to central departments, CCS also serves the wider public sector, operating across local councils, schools and NHS trusts. For these smaller entities, it’s about “finding ways to interact in a more ‘digitally self-help way’”, with a move towards digitisation of service offers to make CCS as easy to do business with as possible.

In his time as CCS CEO Harrison has focused on getting the right operating model in place, implementing category strategies across four pillars (facilities management and utilities, information technology, professional services and corporate solutions – “everything else”) and bringing in a new leadership team.

Work is also ongoing around making it easier for SMEs to supply to government. “We’ve been doing a lot of work looking at our terms and conditions, our tender processes and thinking how we can eliminate or simplify some of the process while maintaining compliance,” he explains. “I’d love to get to a place where whether you’re a large company or SME, you’re able to comply with our bid process in a way that is commensurate with your scale.”

CCS success stories include work done with the government legal department, putting in place panels of lawyers to cover different types of legal activities. The fact this took two years to embed demonstrates the complexity of the environment. Other wins are Crown Hosting Data Centres, a joint venture with an SME to offer secure data storage, which is expected to deliver one local council year-on-year efficiency savings of 60%, and a project to open up the public sector water market. The first public sector water framework agreement brings together 122 bodies and spend of £40m, achieving average savings of 4%, and up to 10% in some cases.

Carillion lessons

Public sector procurement has been in the firing line of late in the wake of the demise of Carillion, which collapsed in January, taking 450 public sector contracts with it. John Manzoni, giving evidence to MPs as part of the enquiry into Carillion, said recently: “We have allowed an era where companies have spread themselves very thin, bid low just to win contracts, and in part because we have not had the sophistication internally to do much other than go for price.”

For Harrison, the bigger debate is about “how you manage outsourcing”. “You’ve got to be able to specify very clearly what you want your suppliers to provide,” he says. “That’s really difficult when the nature of the service has a habit of changing, sometimes changing based on different political priorities and the public sector procurement regulations are better suited to buying clearly specified goods rather than complex services. You have got to come up with a model for specifying which allows for variation. You might get changes in specification that mean you have to retender the business, so how do you build that into a contract in a public sector environment? These are not simple challenges.

 

 “Then it’s about how well you manage the contract. What the issue of Carillion has brought to life is that we need to clearly specify what the service is, making sure there’s appropriate risk transfer. There’s no point transferring risk to people who can’t manage it – for me that is part of the specification. The second bit is about managing those contracts in a more effective, professional way.”

As Harrison prepares to leave CCS, he acknowledges that “this journey is not finished” – he estimates it’s about 40% complete so far – and that “in many ways this is too early for me to be leaving”. But his passion for the procurement profession means he couldn’t turn down the opportunity to lead its professional body.

“This profession has some fantastic people, and if as a professional body we can provide the technical knowledge and training to both improve capabilities and find ways of helping people feel more confident in their capabilities, and through that confidence be able to deliver more value, that would be a significant step forward,” he says.

One of procurement’s challenges is “making it an attractive profession where great people want to work’, he believes. “Those of us who have ended up in procurement think it’s a wonderful place. But the profession is still seen as ‘the people who generate the savings’, whereas I think procurement should be seen as ‘the people who help us spend our money wisely’. Then it becomes much more about value.”

While Harrison sees technical procurement skills as “well understood”, he thinks there are angles around the skills senior leaders need. “What’s the best way to give procurement leaders the right set of skills to be a great CPO?” he asks. “The skills of a CPO are more similar to those of a chief sales officer or business unit leader than a buyer. There’s work to do on how we equip people at senior levels with the skills and experience they need to be successful.”

It’s an agenda he is keen to get stuck into, come August. Why, despite a career in general management, has he been unable to escape the draw of procurement? “It’s just so broad,” he says. “You’re always dealing with change. You never know what change of demand or variation in a supply market you will next have to find a solution for. There’s never a dull moment in the procurement world.”  

Five things Malcolm Harrison can’t live without

1. Walking boots
I like having a destination or objective to aim for, and overcoming whatever challenges or terrain are in my path. I like being outside and being with family, friends and colleagues. The best way to do this is walking.

2. A photograph of my family, and our dog
My family is so important for me and a key reason why I do what I do at work – so I can enjoy times with them.

3. Snickers bars
I like chocolate. Snickers reminds me of my early career at Mars, though back then it was called Marathon! Mars is the best company I have worked for. I learnt an enormous amount from the environment, the principles and the people.

4. Book of Times crosswords
One can always learn something new and crosswords are a great way to do this. Solving conundrums is like creating good supply strategies – it can be just as complicated.

5. Everest the Hard Way
This book by Chris Bonington is about his ascent of Everest in 1975. The planning, the logistics and the team work involved is something I admire and relate to with my limited experience of mountaineering – and as a procurement professional!

 


发布时间:2018/9/12 9:58:53


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