Report from the Northeast Supply Chain Conference, Day 2

Pfizer’s Martin describes challenges of retaining talent in a procurement organization in keynote session

By Susan Avery -- Purchasing, 10/2/2007 12:51:00 PM

Retaining talent is a challenge for Lisa Martin, senior vice president of worldwide procurement, at Pfizer, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

One reason it’s tough for her to hold on to skilled purchasing professionals is that they are often recruited by other functions within the global pharmaceutical company wowed by their abilities. The purchasing pros serve on cross functional teams created to procure many of the indirect services bought by Pfizer’s businesses.

Martin was keynote speaker today at the 2007 Northeast Supply Chain Conference & Education Exhibit held this week in Marlboro, Mass.

One procurement team at Pfizer whose results particularly make Martin proud: Legal. Procurement led a cross functional team to source the company’s litigation services. Four years ago, Pfizer had been working with more than 400 law firms. The team, using a strategic sourcing process, selected one firm to act as general contractor to coordinate the company’s business with the law firms.

“The team shrunk the supply base considerably,” Martin says, “and, consequently, the company is not only seeing improved quality, but also better relationships with suppliers.” The team had a champion: Jeff Kinder, who was then the company’s general counsel before becoming its CEO in July 2006. Procurement has since been asked to get involved in the company’s intellectual property and employment law purchases.  

Of the company’s marketing and advertising buy, which procurement has successfully sourced in Europe, she says, “We are like a glue. We learned more about marketing than some of the regions. We became valuable to the leaders of the pharmaceutical operations.”

In the midst of a transformation of worldwide procurement (the company grew significantly by two major mergers in the past 10 years), Martin is responsible for $15.5 billion in annual spend, and has a savings target of $2 billion. About 680 purchasing professionals, or colleagues as Pfizer calls, them work in procurement.

The transformation consists of procurement collaborating more across regions and functions, challenging the status quo in the way the company works with suppliers and learning how to do more and achieve more. 

For conference attendees, she listed what she considers to be success factors for procurement. Among them, procurement needs:

1. A broad business perspective.

2. Bright purchasing professionals.

3. Goals that align with those of the corporation.

4. Established data visibility and use of technology.

5. To move with speed and agility.

The 2007 Northeast Supply Chain Conference is presented by The New England Supply Chain Collaborative which consists of The Association for Operations Management (APICS North Shore Chapter 20 and APICS Boston Chapter 10), The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals (CSCMP) New England Roundtable, The Northeast Supply Management Group, a special interest group of the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) and The Purchasing Management Association of Boston, affiliated with ISM).

CLICK HERE to read a review of Day 1 of the Northeast Supply Chain Conference.

Also see: Purchasing.com's Back to School blog, providing perspectives from NECON 2007