Ep 55: Applying Procurement Where the Business Happens feat. Jeff Bever

Rather than just focusing on that old ‘seat at the table’ longing, today’s procurement professionals have a range of options for where to direct their skills and energy. Whether it is having the right conversations with the right people in the business, or leveraging their ability to solve problems collaboratively while applying time-tested category expertise, there is no substitute for truly capable people. 

In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Jeff Bever. Jeff is the Senior Director of Strategic Sourcing and Procurement at Mars. He has over 20 years’ experience working as a transformational senior procurement executive across multiple industries. Most impressive is that he has managed to lead forward progress on efficiency, cost, and quality while also building an empowered team of people that are inspired and motivated by each other and the work that they do.

In this conversation, Jeff leans on his incredibly diverse procurement background to provide inspiration for how procurement can continue to drive individual and team evolution:

• What procurement needs to change about their mindset if they want to better align their work with overarching enterprise priorities
• The importance of having the right conversations with the right people to drive desired outcomes
• How the approach to building and developing talent has to change to enable the current stage of procurement’s evolution