Procurement of the Future: Meeting the Needs of Your Business in 2026

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Chairperson to be announced. If you are interested in demonstrating your thought leadership during this interactive session, please contact Evan Speight at evan.speight@wbresearch.com for more information.

Traditionally, people join Procurement for a variety of reasons but many will tell you that they "fell into the profession" from another discipline, rather than specifically targeting it as a career choice. As such, Procurement teams today are often comprised of talent who have had previous careers outside of Procurement, including finance, marketing, operations, and other related supply chain functions. As Procurement capabilities are increasingly seen as critical value drivers within the business, the need to attract talent into Procurement becomes paramount. In this session, we will discuss how "career pathing" can be an important lever in talent development and talent attraction, while offering options for choosing a Procurement career rather than just falling into it!

-Why should you consider integrating "career pathing" into your talent development framework?
-How can career planning guiding principles and tools help your talent?
-What is the role of functional and leadership competencies?
-What is the role of the employee vs. the manager?
-Once implemented, how do you measure success and keep it sustainable?

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The best CPOs put a priority on spend analytics as a starting point for savings. What are the starting points necessary to start operating in a way that allows you to look in the rearview mirror while assessing the current environment and predicting what lies ahead? What areas can you get a clear picture of and which are more of a brave new world? Find out:

-Current changes to data analytics in the market place
-How to identify multiple data points to create action points with critical suppliers
-Compiling and cleaning data from multiple sources
-Examining where there are opportunities for collaborative risk mitigation
-What really is “big data” in a Procurement context (that enables sourcing managers to make better decisions)?
-Predictive Analytics — where else should we be using business analytics to make better sourcing decisions?
-Anticipating and seeking data to optimize, simulate and/or create decision models to look over the horizon and to create business solutions that are truly a competitive advantage

Be sure to join these interactive roundtable sessions and take a deep dive into the specific areas you came to discuss. Opportunities to sit and learn from life science executives like these do not exist elsewhere. Take control of your own event experience. Don’t be shy! Ask questions (or answer them!) of other conference attendees who are dealing with the same challenges as you. Roundtable Discussions:
1. Building a Procurement Function from the Ground Up
Scott McKinney, Associate Director of Procurement, bluebird bio

2. Topic to be Determined
Tarbinlam Lafon, Director – Travel, Card & Meetings Procurement, Merck

3. Approach, Applicability and Importance of Understanding Multi-tier (or sub-tier) Suppliers
Raj Kshatriya, Program Manager -J&J Global Supply Chain, Johnson & Johnson

4. Building Career Ladders to Keep Your Team High Performing and Engaged
Eliza Gonzalez, Director, Global Procurement Talent Management, Johnson & Johnson NEW

5. Best Practices in Category Management
Samuel Friedman, Director, Strategic Procurement Leader, Bristol-Myers Squibb

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Take this final opportunity to meet with your peers and network in our solution's lounge while meeting with some of our cutting edge vendors.

Be sure to join these interactive roundtable sessions and take a deep dive into the specific areas you came to discuss. Opportunities to sit and learn from life science executives like these do not exist elsewhere. Take control of your own event experience. Don’t be shy! Ask questions (or answer them!) of other conference attendees who are dealing with the same challenges as you. Roundtable Discussions:
1. Building a Procurement Function from the Ground Up
Scott McKinney, Associate Director of Procurement, bluebird bio

2. Topic to be Determined
Tarbinlam Lafon, Director – Travel, Card & Meetings Procurement, Merck

3. Approach, Applicability and Importance of Understanding Multi-tier (or sub-tier) Suppliers
Raj Kshatriya, Program Manager -J&J Global Supply Chain, Johnson & Johnson

4. Building Career Ladders to Keep Your Team High Performing and Engaged
Eliza Gonzalez, Director, Global Procurement Talent Management, Johnson & Johnson NEW

5. Best Practices in Category Management
Samuel Friedman, Director, Strategic Procurement Leader, Bristol-Myers Squibb

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With three days filled with sessions, how can you ensure that you walk away with a few “golden nuggets” to take back to your organization? This session will help synthesize some of the key take-aways and provide you with a procurement toolkit to implement upon your return to the office.