As a global procurement and supply chain leader, Joanna discusses her career with Stephany, her thoughts on the importance of the right data, and her advice to both leaders and junior employees looking to disrupt their companies for the better.

Joanna delves into her start as an engineer and how she moved from supply chain to falling in love with procurement. She highlights mentors who taught her valuable lessons and the experiences that built her confidence about speaking up when she had solid insight to share with senior executives. She and Stephany break down the differences between data and information.

Joanna shares practical examples on how the right data with the right technology helps save money, benefit clients, and streamline workflow throughout different organizations. She discusses the value of really thinking about processes, your business, what your pain points are, and what your goal truly is when choosing technology for transformation. Joanna’s conversation with Stephany provides thought-provoking insights applicable to all organizations.

Tune in to this episode to learn more about:

• The difference between raw data, information and analytics
• How asking the right questions of your data dramatically changes how information can be used
• Using data as the raw materials procurement is sourcing for actionable insights

About Joanna Martinez:

Joanna Martinez is a speaker, consultant and advisor with a special focus on helping companies and individuals achieve their transformational goals. Sometimes that means advising senior executives directly; frequently it means rolling up her sleeves and working on projects along with the team or delivering workshops to improve skills in areas like stakeholder alignment, digitization, or creating positive change.

After receiving engineering degrees from Rutgers University Joanna’s career has centered on assisting companies that were being battered by disruptive forces, creating innovative ways to grow their bottom lines or reduce costs. Working as a Supply Chain or Procurement leader, she led transformation initiatives for firms in different sectors, among them Johnson & Johnson (pharmaceutical, consumer products), Diageo (beverages), AllianceBernstein LP (financial services), and Cushman & Wakefield (real estate services, facilities management). Today, her consulting clients range from startups to Fortune 100 companies in a wide mix of businesses, recently including insurance, manufacturing, life sciences, health services, and technology.

She was named a Distinguished Alumna by Rutgers College of Engineering and now sits on the School of Engineering’s Industry Advisory Board. She also advises two technology companies and a professional services organization. Joanna and her teams have been recognized for innovation or customer excellence by Determine, American Express, Egencia, and Heublein. For the last four years, she has been designated a Top Global Influencer and Thought Leader in multiple categories by Thinkers360.

Her book, A Guide to Positive Disruption, draws on her experiences making positive changes at the organizations for which she has worked and provides a framework to follow for those who want to be successful in a business undergoing disruption. It is available on Amazon.

Her latest project is a set of workshops to help people in business understand digital concepts like Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Joe Agresta
• Matchbook
• ProcureTech 100

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Stephany Lapierre - TealBook: website | twitter | linkedin | youtube | instagram

Joanna Martinez - Speaker, Consultant, and Advisor: website | linkedin | book

Transcript

Welcome to Data Unleashed, a podcast that brings you insights from procurement's most innovative visionaries. Alongside incredibly brilliant guests, show host Stephany Lapierre explores the power of data, how it challenges us, and how you can challenge the status quo. You'll be inspired, but more importantly, you're getting actionable advice in every conversation that will help you unleash the power of data in your own organization.

Katherine McCleery

Welcome to Data Unleashed. Steph, how are you doing today?

Stephany Lapierre

I'm great. How are you, Katherine?

Katherine McCleery

It's a pretty great Monday coming off from some summer holiday weeks. And I love the episode that we're introducing today. This was actually our very first recording and this was our first go. And we had an incredible guest. Let the audience know who we're talking to today. And by the way, this is Steph Lapierre, CEO and Founder of TealBook. I'm Katherine, I work here at TealBook as well. We are on this incredible podcast journey starting with our first guest...

Stephany Lapierre

Joanna Martinez.

Katherine McCleery

Yes. And Joanna has got quite a bit of experience in supply chain and then transitioning over into procurement. Stephany, if you want to give our audience just a little bit of insight into the Joanna that you know, I know we're going to hear some of it in the episode. But tell us a little bit about the Joanna that you've come to know.

Stephany Lapierre

Yeah, I've known Joanna now for a few years, she actually chaired one of our CPO roundtables, meetings back four or five years ago, and it was in New York, and it was Phil Ideson, actually, from Art of Procurement that introduced us. And so we hadn't had an opportunity to chat or meet and then we connected to have her chair. And she did such a fantastic job, first of all, chairing that conversation, and then became really excited about what we were working on and the idea of solving this Big Data Challenge. And so her and I stayed connected ever since. I had the pleasure to get to know her more personally. And she's also an advisor at TealBook. And so she sits on our advisory board, where we have a group of thought leaders that are keeping us honest and really more connected to what's happening in the industry. And Joanna has been such a fantastic, I'd say friend, advisor, inspiring thought leader. And I was excited to have her do our first podcast, because she has always had the ability to see opportunities in the role that she's had, and leveraged tools and leveraged data as a way to differentiate herself and positioned herself so that she could navigate a lot of different mergers and acquisition, restructuring, her story is quite impressive. And so in the last few years, she is not operating anymore. She's become a teacher of technology. She is also an author, she wrote a book recently called The Guide to Positive Disruption. And she has behind her - I don't know actually, if in the podcast, you won't see if you're just listening - but she has all these fish in a frame. And she has this one fish in the middle that's red that’s swimming upwards, the other way. And that's very much how she has defined herself, as how do you disrupt yourself? How do you navigate all these challenges and ensure that you're staying relevant and moving up in your career throughout all the changes and the things that you can control and the things that you can't control. And so you know, the fact that she gave a very tangible example of how she used data earlier in her career. And she took a big sort of step and took her courage to speak up, allowed her to differentiate herself in a situation where it actually enabled her to make some significant changes that were adding value to the organization and position herself to be on this career journey that she's had. And so I'm excited for everyone to listen, it's part data, but it's also part of just inspiring. And we know by hearing customers right now, times are just hard. People have been stretched thin asking to do more more requirements, more disruption. It feels like procurement has gone through like such a roller coaster in the past couple of years. And I just think that this is going to be a nice little uplift of seeing in your own career, where do you see those opportunities? How can you leverage data? How can you leverage tools and relationships so that you can move into a career that is rewarding and inspiring, and one day, you know, inspire others like Joanna has done for so many of us.

Katherine McCleery

Yeah, you nailed it. And the coolest thing about Joanna and hearing her stories and seeing certain patterns and how she has operated, she does ask the hard questions and she's not afraid to challenge. And so I think that's what we love the most about her. And she really is good at disrupting and she's good at identifying what should be disrupted. So I hope that everybody enjoys this conversation, Joanna is giving us a masterclass on data, and she's got the experience to do it.

Stephany Lapierre

Joanna, I'm so happy that you are taking the time to speak with me today. You've become a friend, you've become a mentor. I've heard you speak several times, we've had conversations. And I certainly feel like I've learned a lot from you. Now we're here today to talk about how data has impacted your career. And I know that you have a ton of experience to share. Walk us through your career, because it's such an impressive career. How are you here today?

Joanna Martinez

So I'm an engineer, I just actually posted, a few weeks ago, a photo of myself and another woman I had gone to school with and said, "This is a photo of 40% of the women in my class in engineering school." That was pretty impactful when you kind of step back and look at that. I spent the first part of my career in supply chain roles. The second part in procurement because I did a stint in procurement and just loved it, and decided I was going to focus on fixing broken procurement organizations. And then the last bit has been, after my company was purchased in a takeover, I was about to take another CPO role and said, ah, I think I've been given a gift, I should try something a little bit different. And that's what brought me to working independently. So today I do a mix of speaking, I do some roll-up-the-sleeves consulting and coaching, and I advise a few companies. I believe that I am more effective when I actually get down and dirty into the projects. Because you have a better sense for, you know, the impact of bad data, for the technology that's out there that you can use to help this company solve its problems. It's one thing to be, you know, a consultant from, you know, 10,000 feet. I like being a consultant at a working level.

Stephany Lapierre

You said something important. You went from supply chain and then you fell in love with procurement. And so I'd love to unpack this a little bit. What made you fall in love with procurement and not go back specifically to supply chain?

Joanna Martinez

Well, I was about to become the first female plant manager in the division. I worked for a big company but in that division I was about to become the first female plant manager. It was the job that I had been working for. And as I was getting ready, it was a few days before the announcement was gonna get made, I realized that my boss's office was cleaned out. There were no family pictures or anything else on the wall. I came to discover that there had been a coup, that a new management team was coming in, he was out, all bets were off. And my opportunity to get that job was gone. So the person who took over, after a few weeks, asked me to go for a walk and said, 'You know, I am loathe to fire you because you appear to have some brains. But your replacement has already bought a house. So here's what I suggest.' The person who was the beloved head of procurement wanted to move to mergers and acquisitions, didn't have anyone to take his place, and so I went there with the promise of getting that role when he said I was ready to have that role. So I spent several years - it was like the Jedi learning at the feet of Yoda. He was he was wonderful in terms of the things that he taught me and the opportunities that he gave me. So it turned out to be great. And I think that as a technical person, you are a better procurement person, because you understand or have a curiosity about how things are made. And even when it's not a tangible thing that you're buying, when it's a service, there's still a supply chain, there are still components that come together to provide you with a piece of technology or even the act of bringing a temporary employee on board. There's a supply chain involved in that. And so with that kind of supply chain curiosity, procurement offered the opportunity to be looking at many, many, many different supply chains.

Stephany Lapierre

I 100% agree. And, you know, throughout my career I've met thousands of people in procurement and everyone that gets into procurement falls in love with it. Like no one goes to school thinking I'm going to be in procurement one day, and then the people that once they touch it, because it oversees, to your point, so many parts of the organization. And it's great to meet so many people passionate and it feels like, you know, we need to spend more time for the rest of the organization to really have a good understanding of the value that procurement can drive. Let's fast forward, so data in itself, and that's actually one of the gap that I've seen in procurement from the early days, we got really passionate people that wanted to drive change in the organization. And we have a function that has not necessarily had the luxury, right, of having all the investment and having better data, better insight, right? And I'd love to hear, in your career, especially in the earlier days, you've had a great story of how data has impacted your career very early on, and how it's changed a mindset for you of the importance of data. I'd love to hear it.

Joanna Martinez

There's a difference between data and information. And data abounds, even before all the automation and all the digitization, there was plenty of data there. But the act of creating that into information that you could use was onerous, you know, it required calculation, you have to think, you know, what am I trying to do? What pieces of data do I get? Now, as there's more automation, that is at your fingertips, and it enables you to make decisions much faster. What happened with me is that I was helping on a project that had to do with automation. Now, it wasn't automating equipment, it was that people, who had been with the company for a long time, a few people had retired, they had way too much information up here, and not codified in any way. So I was part of a project to look at codifying this, and what technology could we put in place? And how could we take advantage of the good processes they had been following and automate them in some way now that those gentlemen were no longer working. And it was all going to be about making the information available much faster in a different kind of way. But as I was doing it, I kind of stepped back and said, if I look at this a different way, if I'm not focused on just the speed with which I can have this information or this data, but, in fact, if I look at what it's telling me - what it was telling me was that it took 90 days to actually make the product that this facility was manufacturing. And that was a shock. Because we were surrounded by equipment going at 1000 a minute, 700 a minute, there was certainly a perception that things were just speeding along. But with the lack of an end to end look at the data, in fact, there was a lot more time lost, there was a lot more time waiting for quality checks. It wasn't just get the information, if you were going to make an impact, you needed to significantly invest in the end to end and look at the end to end because maybe that warehouse automation project you didn't have to do anymore, because maybe you're going to make all of that go away. So it created a different set of priorities. And when I first went back to the senior folks and said, hey, I'm doing this and look at what it's showing me, I'll never forget one gentleman, he didn't believe me at all. And it wasn't, he wasn't mean or anything else, he just said to himself - and I think he kind of said it to me - well, the kid made a mistake, right? The kid made a mistake. And it was when they went in and they started to check the numbers and look at this and look at that, the kid didn't make a mistake. It really was in this interconnected world, where you have these just in time and all these other kinds of processes in place, this, for all of the whirling and all of the activity, stuff was just stopped because nobody had looked at that. And nobody had stopped to ask themselves, how can I do this differently? How can I approach this in a different way? And, in fact, in the end, the investment didn't happen, where the expectation was when we started. The investment happened in automation, and in reducing inventories, and then linking pieces of equipment together and normalizing that, so, in fact, you weren't creating, you know, multi steps, you were getting, you know, raw materials out and then a finished product at the end. It also resulted in a different kind of supplier relationship. Because this company didn't have the technology, or the desire to invest in the technology, for some of the steps along the way. It's a consumer goods company. They're good at marketing, brilliant at research and everything else, it was a wonderful learning and working experience. But they were smart enough to recognize that some pieces of the process were best going to the suppliers and tapping into their brain power. And I learned that there in that process, that we can be very myopic. We're surrounded by smart people. Look at all the brilliant people you've hired, right? You're surrounded by all this brilliance. It's very easy to get too inner with your thinking. And, in fact, the solution, in many cases, the real expertise is sitting outside. And, when I went into procurement, I think one of the reasons I was successful is that experience was successful because of the participation of the suppliers. The company made the investment it needed to make, it relied on suppliers to make investment, and when they reworked the supply chain, there was a different kind of very connected relationship. So I brought that with me. My challenge to myself was a third of my time was with suppliers, at their facilities that - you know, back in the day when we went to facilities - but in the absence of that, just conversations, knowing the senior executives, understanding where their research direction was, matching them up with the marketing and the sales and the R&D professionals at our company. Sometimes we can be bottlenecks. Because we want it all to come through us. And sometimes the best thing to do is to make the match and then step back and kind of let them have it.

Stephany Lapierre

There's so much I want to unpack into everything you said. One thing that I love, actually, I think maybe from the same company, was Joe Agresta. I heard him speak maybe five years ago to procurement leaders, and he said, 'You're so lucky to be in procurement because you have a window into the world'. And it's what actually got me excited about procurement, was the sense that companies were having business challenges, and they're trying to figure out how to resolve them on their own. And my first consulting firm, which was Matchbook, was meant to take a business challenge and then go look into the world, which supplier had resolved, or faced a similar challenge for another company, because usually when a company faces a challenge it's not unique to that company. Most organizations face similar challenges. And so tapping into that innovation pool, finding suppliers that maybe would have already solved it for someone else, had already maybe innovated from that first solution, or bring suppliers together to develop a solution that was innovative, that was going to impact the top line. That's how I fell in love with procurement. Because I really genuinely thought, if you can leverage all this talent outside the organization, you were only focused on solving that problem.

Joanna Martinez

You're right. And you know what, Stephany, what I came to learn was, that's what they want. Right? I was in the beverage industry for a while. And you've got flavor chemists, and you have people who are watching trends in terms of consumer consumption. And you know, flavor profiles, is watermelon in or out, you know, are people drinking chocolate drinks, that kind of thing. And then developing flavors to go along with that. And there would be these almost affairs, we used to call them, where suppliers would come in and they would bring some of the products they were working on. And what I tried to do was flip that. So they weren't doing it in a vacuum anymore. But, in fact, could hear from our marketing folks, what they were looking at, could share their information, their consumer preference information, and then together come to a decision on where our company's interests were so that they could focus, right, instead of sitting down and coming up with a this, a vanilla, you know, a cola, this and that. They could be targeted based on what our company was sharing with them.

Stephany Lapierre

Yeah, 100%. And to your point, I think the suppliers are looking for that. And us, for example, we could have never built this platform without customer input, right? It's the reiteration of the client's value and business outcome that helps us build a better product. When you have that partnership is when magic happens. I want to go back into... so first, you made a really good point earlier in our conversation where you said there's a lot of data. Data has been around for a long time, there's a lot of it, but it's not the same as information. It's actually not the same as insight. Right? And so, to your point, there's a lot of information. But a lot of the processes in the workflow were built around the collection of this data to turn it into information. If that took time, it was a bottleneck. And so I think that's a really good point that you've made. If we come back to data, when you are, and it doesn't matter the level, when you're building a business case, for delivering bad or good information or an idea, what would be your advice?

Joanna Martinez

Tie it to a business need. Not just because it's cool, or it would make this go faster. I was helping a Human Resources organization for a very large company that was way behind the times, and they had not digitized most of their HR. And I was helping this process and they were justifying it based on the amount of space they were going to save, right, with filing cabinets being gone. And it was like, no, no, no, the company doesn't care about the number of filing cabinets. And these are embedded in facilities, you're not exactly going to lop off a room and sell it, you're doing this because you will have less errors, your employees will feel empowered, when there is something like an address change or a new child or a marriage, that change can happen quickly, the information will be at the fingertips. So someone is leaving the company, you'll be able to have a good offboarding process. There were a million reasons why they do it. And all of them supported the company's objectives in terms of how they wanted their employees to be treated. But they had started that project kind of going off in the wrong direction. In terms of the justification.

Stephany Lapierre

Yeah. It's the why, too that's so important. Like the why, and people being curious to get to the why.

Joanna Martinez

You know, Stephany, another example in financial services. So I worked in financial services during a time that there was a lot of scrutiny on the fees that financial services companies were charging their customers. And we were able to take a lot of the work we were doing or wanted to do, and tie it to how it would have an effect on those fees. Because you have bank charges and transaction fees, and you printed annual reports and did all kinds of things that actually did add cost, kind of buried back in the supply chain. And they did add cost. And they did result in customers or clients being asked to pay an upcharge because of all of that. And so being able to take it and tie back and say, 'look, this is a component, this is a component, this is a component, we're going to work on this'. And then that is going to reflect your ability to have a lower number, you're gonna be able to reduce those transaction fees, was, for me, a shining moment. There was nothing like sitting at a quarterly investor report meeting and listening to the CFO talk about some of the procurement activities that had a result in their ability to meet the kinds of challenges that the SEC was putting in front of them.

Stephany Lapierre

Isn't that powerful?

Joanna Martinez

Yeah, very.

Stephany Lapierre

And we've seen that, I think more than ever,in the last two years, is the importance of having information, having data, building the business case. Because the senior leadership has been looking at answers that are impacting, disrupting, supply chain procurement, across the organization in the compliance requirements that are growing an organization. So I think having access to that information to be able to take it to the leadership team with the why, with the information that they need to drive decision, is a great, great opportunity for procurement. How would you say that, in terms of your career, how are you thinking about data as we're going forward? Right, to my point, there's a lot more disruption, there's a lot more requirements, there's a lot more technology, there's just more. I'm sure, like, if you look back at your career, what we've been, you know, the pace and the demands are growing. What do you think the role of data is playing even today versus, I'd say, even 2, 3, 4 or 5 years ago, right, it's changed quite a bit.

Joanna Martinez

So, you know, people don't understand. It was one thing to pull data and summarize it in an Excel spreadsheet type of device, right? That was something that people could wrap their heads around. Now you have, you know, artificial intelligence playing a part, you have, you know, other kinds where, you know, robotic process automation taking place where accuracy rates of certain functions are going way up, because a robot's doing it, you know, you've got all of these changes that are taking place because of digitization. And 100% of the time, when I speak about the digital world, somebody comes up to me when it's done and says, thanks a lot for explaining this, whatever this is, I didn't understand it. And I didn't want to be the one, I think everybody else on my team does, and I didn't want to be the one to raise my hand and to say that I didn't understand it. So now at least, you know, my goal is always to help people have a very basic understanding. So when someone says machine learning, they kind of understand what it is about blockchain, etc. And that's very powerful. But the fact that it happens so often tells me that there are thousands, certainly dozens, for every one that raises their hand, there's a dozen more in the room that are thinking the same thing and don't want to be the ones who will say that. In fact, I had a situation where I was addressing the global procurement organization for a financial services company, and as I was watching the faces, I realized that the one who didn't get it was the CPO. That he didn't understand all of this. And there were many people in the organization, they might not have gotten it all, but they got enough snippets that they were comfortable talking about a digital experience or a digital journey to go on. And he was the one who, I had to keep watching his face, and adjust what I was saying, and pose questions to the group and get some answers and sort of change the scope of the presentation, to make him feel more comfortable. But also to get them in a mode where he was actually going to learn something.

Stephany Lapierre

I'm going to throw something maybe a bit controversial to you. Do you think procurement needs to know - and I love that you have made a point to educate and simplify because I do you know, on one hand, I'm gonna say I do believe that people need to understand technology enough to be able to translate what this means in terms of their own business. But would you say procurement needs to have a deep understanding of the technology itself?

Joanna Martinez

Well, you just have to look at Elouise Epstein's interconnected map to see all of the technologies that are out there. You don't have to understand each one, not at all. You don't even have to understand any, you just have to accept what they do, kick the tires a little bit, and work to find the pain points in your organization and those point solutions that are going to help you get where you're going to go. You know, some of us work in companies where it's possible to spend tens of millions of dollars and bring in a really big consulting firm and go after it in a very big way. But many folks don't. Many folks have some kind of constraints. And it's particularly those who need to educate themselves a little more. If you're working with, you know, one of the big consulting firms, you need to establish a good relationship, be comfortable with asking questions, and work hard within your organization to get the funding for the big projects you're going to do. At a smaller scale, you need to be a little bit more roll-up-the-sleeves. That doesn't mean, even, that a CPO should be able to go into Tealbook, for example, and do a search in Tealbook. Doesn't have to do that. But needs to have watched it, have an understanding of what happens, and feel confident that their people have been adequately trained to be able to do it.

Stephany Lapierre

I 100% agree. I think there's a lot of options today on how you decide to go after this digitization. It's very personal to an organization and their business outcome and their budget and the scale and what they're ultimately trying to achieve. When I think we're going to see a world where there's more and more and more technologies and more solutions in the market. What do you think when I say garbage in garbage out, porta potties, if only we had better data?

Joanna Martinez

That's true, right? I'm going to tell you, actually, I can't even remember how many times I was part of an end to end, you know, ERP system going in. And that data never got cleaned up. You know, this whole thing of, okay, we're gonna take these supplier profiles we have, whatever the number was 6500, 15,000, depending on the size of the company, and we're gonna go through an exercise and we're gonna clean it all up. It never happened. There were good intentions, it would take much longer, sooner or later, the rest of the project would be implemented, that cleanup never took place. And things would just chug on. And yeah, maybe you went from 15,000 maybe to 13. Maybe you eliminated the suppliers that you hadn't done business with in the last couple of years. But you never really made it happen and, therefore, you don't get the ultimate, you know, the ultimate responses. You don't find that someone's going to order something they don't have, maybe some of the options that are showing up in the system, or suppliers that you dropped for some very good business reasons. You know, the things, for example, that you all do in making sure that that information coming in is good and it's constantly being refreshed. To me, it's like the flavor chemists who are out there, they understand where the company is headed, and they're working to develop the new products there. You understand where the data need is, and you're working to make sure that things are constantly being refreshed, that you're going to the best sources, that you're weeding out suppliers that don't belong there. So companies need people to do that, because they will never do it themselves.

Stephany Lapierre

You're an adviser to us. And you've known me now for a long time so I appreciate, you know, your statements.

Joanna Martinez

It wasn't meant to be a commercial. But it's true. When you think about, one of the garbage in garbage out situations I think of ,is the lack of cleanup. I mean, I was involved in one just three years ago, nothing ever really got cleaned.

Stephany Lapierre

Well, it may be clean for a moment. But what's fascinating to me, so you've been in this space for a long time, and you're a thought leader, you understood very early on when we start speaking, but data itself, it was almost like - and I feel this, like, 5, 6, 7 years ago - it was almost accepting that data was never going to be great. Right? And I wonder why, like, why was data not as important as it is today? Because it definitely feels to me, at least, you know that the world has changed. And I think the realization of the importance of data as part of the digital transformation is becoming more critical. But I still hear CPOs that are still claiming, you know, oh, if only we could get master data and will shrug their shoulders because... Why do you think that's the case? I'm honestly more just curious on your perspective.

Joanna Martinez

So I think that the big legacy systems, they have compromise built into them. They're not perfect. If you're doing something end to end, the more you have multiple steps and multiple organizations dealing with, you know, a technology, the more things it's trying to do, the more it has to compromise along the way. And so there is an acceptance that it's not right. Oh, I would like to do the monthly closing this way but the technology doesn't allow us to do it so we have to do it that way. So there becomes an acceptance of doing it the best way you can or the best way you perceive you can. And I think the emergence of all of these very targeted pieces of technology, whose goal it is, is to fix that problem, or this problem or whatever, is very different. That's not the same as a massive system going in and trying to do everything end to end. And so there's more possibility of data, you know, the world is enabling it. Someone once said to me, I think this is true, a good idea is a good idea forever. You just have to wait until the world changes and you can implement it. And I think it's like 100% true. Things change, you know, technology changes, cars go from gas driven to hybrid to electric, you know, the the world... and you just have to kind of jump on, seize the opportunity when the change is there, and you're able to grab it and use it.

Stephany Lapierre

It's a good point. I remember when, in the early days of Tealbook, I heard ad procurement leaders, a CPO, saying I will never put my data in the cloud. That was not that long ago, right? I'm sure either he's moved on and now he has lots of data in the cloud, or he doesn't have a job anymore. But that was not too long ago. And I do think that, to your point, we were even early thinking about data, talking about, like, we were educating on AI machine learning only three years ago we were doing webinar. I don't think that we would do that again. There's maybe, to your point, a lot of people that still don't quite know, but I think we've passed now that there's so much technology being leveraged, that we're sort of looking at, okay, how can we leverage these tools, which - technology is really tools - to enable parts of our transformation. But I think your point is right, that it's the right time at the right place. And there's an appropriate time for people to adopt. And we’ve seen, as early adopters to now, especially with COVID, highlighting that the software that promises good data, end to end software to even any sort of software promising good data, was not doing it at the speed and at the scale that the organization needed it. And to the C suite that needed information, insight, or recommendations so that they could make faster decisions that were, you know, as critical as ensuring that the business was still gonna be around.

Joanna Martinez

Totally, totally.

Stephany Lapierre

It's really fascinating to hear, like, every time I talk to you I feel like I learn something new about your path. I'd love just maybe a few last words of wisdom. Now you've seen a lot, and we've only had a tiny little tip of the iceberg of everything that you've done, but what would you say to the procurement community that is now looking at this Elouise Epstein echographic? All these technologies, right, all this expectation? Like, what would be your word of advice?

Joanna Martinez

Well, you know, you're not a kid with a shopping cart, right? You're not Christmas shopping here. It all sounds so good. And it's all good, right? It's not going to be, a technology is not going to be on her chart unless it works.But you have to really think about your process, your business, what's the goal? And where are the pain points, and you've got to fix the pain points, or have something that's going to help towards the company making its goal or the division making its goal, whatever. That's how you have to start. It's too easy to be swayed by 'wow, that's really cool, that's really cool, I'd like to try this, or I'd like to try that'. And then you don't make any progress at all. So to the extent that you can stay laser focused on 'what are the critiques that our senior leadership has of my organization and is there a technology that's going to help it as a technology solution'? What's the company striving for? What are its objectives from a people standpoint, from a technology standpoint, and what's out there that can help me do my piece much faster?

Stephany Lapierre

Yeah, I agree. And what do you think the role of data - because I would differentiate data from software, right, the technologies that exist and we're seeing now, I don't know, I think there's thousands that were being reviewed by ProcureTech 100, and there's gonna be more - how do you place data as part of the future of procurement?

Joanna Martinez

Well, decisions need to be data driven. And it was an interesting thing I read and it talked about financial services, and it talked about portfolio managers and how it used to be that they focused on choosing the best stocks. And now the more forward thinkers are focused on choosing the best algorithms. And using that to get the best result for their clients. And then stepping back and saying, again, as I said, does this make sense? With what I know about this client and their personal preferences, with what I know about them and their family and the decisions are making, is this the right portfolio to recommend? And I think that we don't have to understand all of the nuances of the math that's going on in the background. We do need to feel comfortable that the right data is being pulled to give me that recommendation or that end result. When I was talking to Catherine, we discussed, we kind of laughed about a situation I was in where a supplier came in with all this information about, you know, they've been measuring themselves, the SLAs and it was incredible, their accomplishments were just right there at the top of the chart, except none of the things they were measuring themselves on were important. So they had the data - and it was legitimate data, there was no problem with the data - but they were using that to measure success that wasn't important, metrics that were not important to the company that I was working for. So I think it's a marriage. You certainly need confidence, you need to be able to rely on the technical people on your team, that the data that's being pulled in is the right data. And then you need to understand enough about the algorithms and the factors to know, in the end with what comes forward to you, does this make sense? Or do I need to adjust this because I know some things that the algorithm doesn't?

Stephany Lapierre

Yeah. The other thing I would say is that I hear often people talk about analytics being data, right? And I think of them to be very different. Because if you don't have good data, if you're not pulling the right data, it doesn't matter what analytics tool or how sophisticated it may be, it's still not gonna give you the right insight to be able to drive your business forward. I think that's a bit of a misconception that I hear often is, oh, yeah, we talked about data we have here analytics, or insights and analytics, which I think are different.

Joanna Martinez

To me the data is the raw material, right? It will give you insights, doing some analysis will give you information or give you an idea or give you a recommendation, whatever word you want to use. But it's the foundation. You can't do anything without data that's good. Everything else, you know, it's kind of the beginning part of the supply chain of information. And if that's not good, then everything that gets built on it going forward isn't going to be right.

Stephany Lapierre

To me, it's the premise of what I build my entire career on is just the fact that if we don't have good data, the strategic objectives are really hard to achieve. Because it's the unsexy foundational things that you need. And if there's ways to improve the quality, automate the collection, because a collection is really hard, right? How do you get this data? How much data across how many attributes that you need? And then how are you able to give context to it and pull it in a way that's insightful and actionable? I always think the data piece is not necessarily what procurement wants to talk about, because it's not sexy, but without good data it's impossible to achieve your strategic objectives. So one kind of feeds the other. That's the sexier stuff that people get to see and communicate.

Joanna Martinez

Oh it's totally unsexy. But you can't get to the cool stuff without it. You have no chance. Because your recommendations will be questioned, your results will be questioned. You just open yourselves up to people not believing you. The second they find a hole in your data foundation, your credibility takes a huge step back.

Stephany Lapierre

Yeah. I often say that we've built procurement on a lot of the processes that we've established in the early days. And I always saw, like, to me it was never a people problem, because we got really smart people very passionate about supporting the business and making good decisions and getting to good outcomes. I then found it was a process issue because we actually over processed. The seven steps of sourcing alone, if you say that to someone in marketing, I know they want to run because they don't want a seven step process. They want, you know, fast and instant. And it was not a software problem because there was all these really sophisticated software that were being built trying to workflow information. I just really saw this as being a data problem. Without good data it's just really hard to be able to, you know, to drive those business objectives. Listen, Joanna, I always enjoy talking to you. And, you know, there's so many topics that I would have gone with you because I think people can learn, people in their career that are navigating. You've been through so much change in your own career and you've reinvented yourself, you seized opportunities, you leverage information, you exude this inquisitive nature of asking the right questions to uncover the truth. And a lot of people could learn from that. So it's probably the next podcast when we talk about how to disrupt yourself or how to take your own career right in your hands and be able to swim upstream like that picture behind you that has the fish. I know you're blocking it, but that's my favorite picture.

Joanna Martinez

Ah, that's right. That's right. That's right, I forgot about that. There's the fish going in the opposite direction. Don't be afraid. Hashtag: be the goldfish.

Stephany Lapierre

Be the goldfish. And to me personally, in what I've heard from you, is, again, that curiosity, asking the right question, get the right information, to build a business case. That no matter where you are sitting in the organization, no matter your gender, no matter how junior or senior you are, you need to build those business case and have the right information to do it. And so it starts with curiosity because, to your point, you could look at a slide, you can look at a chart, it may look really good, but you have to be inquisitive enough to dive deeper. On that note, Joanna, anything, any last words?

Joanna Martinez

You sort of said it. But I tried to use the mantra 'embrace the churn’. Things are gonna get disrupted whether you disrupt it yourself, or whether it gets disrupted for you. And, you know, I keep saying to people that pandemic disruption is new, but disruption because of competitors or pricing or supply chain shortages or new products or, you know, new management teams, mergers, acquisitions, there's a million reasons why things get disrupted, and the less time you spend saying, 'woe is me' and the more time you spend saying 'well, what can I learn from this', how can I gain here, you know, what do I have to offer this new structure, organization, problem, whatever it is, you will win.

Stephany Lapierre

Wise words, I tell my team all the time, change is constant. If there's something that's guaranteed is that things are going to keep changing and change is always uncomfortable for everyone. Change is uncomfortable. But it's how, to your point, it's how you embrace it and seize the opportunity to learn from it and how can you leverage it to move forward and achieve, you know, different bigger things in your career.