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Apr 15, 2025
Making category strategies actionable - Reflections on the Cirtuo Procurement Forum 2025
10
min
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Thinking about putting words to the 3rd Cirtuo Procurement Forum reminded us of the saying ‘Try a thing you haven’t done three times’ by Virgil Thomson. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not. After the dust has settled, it is safe to say that we don’t just like it, we love it.
The Cirtuo Procurement Forum is the only conference in Procurement that is fully focused on Category Management. After exploring the ‘Future of Category Management’ and ‘Navigating complexity with category strategies’, the Procurement Forum 2025 ran under the banner 'Make Category Strategies Actionable'.
Whereas the previous focus was on understanding where we are heading and the role procurement had to play, this year’s focus was on practical insights and tips that could be immediately implemented in organizations. ‘Making category strategies actionable’ sounds simple, but experience has shown us that the hardest part is not designing the strategy but bringing it to life and implementing it.
According to a recent Hackett Group report, transforming the Operating Model and modernizing the digital Procurement landscape are both Top 5 priorities for CPOs in 2025, next to managing costs and securing supply. Category Management and Supplier Relationship Management were part of the Top 5 initiatives to work on to achieve these priorities. The presentations and discussions at the conference underlined the importance of strategic procurement in achieving these ambitions.
The agenda was packed with high-calibre speakers from organizations like Johnson & Johnson, Arm, GSK, Siemens Energy, Danone, The Estee Lauder Company, Astra Zeneca, and tesa. In addition, technology partners Sievo, Archlet, Beroe, and SpendHQ shared the stage, and breakout sessions and a masterclass on AI agents by Dr. Elouise Epstein completed the lineup.
With its mix of client presentations, expert panels, breakout sessions, and networking opportunities, the Procurement Forum therefore offered a unique opportunity for discussing best practices & trends in Category Management and Procurement digitalization with peers and industry experts. And there was a lot to discuss in a year that has been unusual and eventful in so many ways.
Richard Beaumont set the scene for one and a half days of focused on category strategies, strategic supplier management, business partnering, and getting the job done. He rightly pointed out that Procurement lacks neither ambition nor conviction when it comes to being strategic. But moving from insights to actions is still not a straightforward path.
Drasko Jelavic, CEO & Founder of Cirtuo, opened the conference by outlining the ingredients of actionable category strategies and sharing the secret sauce to make it happen. It takes insight, leadership, and a clear understanding of value, especially in an increasingly complex business environment that keeps raising its expectations towards procurement. Drasko shared some examples of the misalignment between corporate leadership and procurement, both in terms of understanding intent and objectives. With some categories being the size of small companies within companies, he argued that Procurement should be bolder and seek out opportunities to engage with leadership teams.
Shashi Mandapaty, former CPO of Johnson & Johnson, held the opening keynote ‘Across the finish line: why procurement must finish what it starts’. This nod towards celebrating the execution of strategies rather than writing them set the tone for the conference. Reflecting on over 25 years in Procurement, he painted a picture of the increasing complexity and expectations category managers face. From being content with tracking the price of crude oil and controlling costs, cash, and assurance of supply, to being responsible for compliance, ESG, and resilient supply chains. He drew parallels to the advancement of technology during the same time, moving from the fax machine and monolithic ERPs to the internet, mobile phones, and cloud solutions.
Moving from intent to action
Shashi explained that on our way towards predictive and autonomous supply chains, we are only held back by legacy lock-ins, black box insecurity, and the data and skill disconnect (the LID). He shared a 5 S framework for making category strategies actionable:
Some of these points were echoed during the following panel discussion ‘Intent & Action: How Procurement can move faster from Ideas to Execution’, where Shashi was joined by Sean Park, CPO of Arm, and Huso Hasanovic, Executive Director Digital Sourcing & Procurement Services at The Estee Lauder Companies. Especially storytelling, branding procurement, and engaging stakeholders made for an interesting discussion. Telling our stories in the context of the business and the language of our audience can help create a burning platform, especially if our ideas align with broader business priorities. The advice was therefore very practical:
Day 2 kicked off with the introduction of Cirtuo’s new Strategic Supplier Management capabilities by Nada Bencan Sepic, VP Product Development and Client Operations at Cirtuo. The Supplier Information Hub provides harmonized and enriched supplier profiles that pull in external 3rd party supplier data. Guided Supplier Strategies builds on the proven methodology, tools, and user guidance of Guided Strategy Creation, and extends them to strategic supplier management. Managing supplier performance and the ability to create performance improvement, risk mitigation, and innovation initiatives in a single platform sparked much interest and conversations among Cirtuo customers. It validated that in a world that keeps increasing its expectations towards procurement, digital category and supplier strategies are the cornerstone and the heart of strategic procurement.
The announcement of the world’s first AI Category Strategy Consultant, Cassi, by Drasko Jelavic and Lana Zuber, Product Owner at Cirtuo, was the highlight of Cirtuo’s second product presentation. It set the scene for discussions around the role of AI agents and the changing relationship between human intelligence and artificial intelligence in the development, validation, and execution of strategies. By grounding Cassi in the proven Cirtuo framework and on actual strategy insights, it overcomes the black box problem of generic LLM-based applications. This marks the beginning of a new era for digital Category Management.
The perspectives of multiple attending technology partners were captured in a panel discussion on ‘Tech maps, hype cycles, and vendor demos: how to overcome the seller-buyer disconnect’. Moderated by Fabian Lampe of Advanced Procurement, Sammeli Sammalkorpi, Co-Founder and CEO of Sievo, Andrew Speck, VP Sales North America at Cirtuo, Lukas Wawrla, Co-Founder of Archlet, Prerna Dhawan, Chief Product Officer at Beroe, and Pierre Lapree, Chief Product Officer at SpendHQ, discussed the importance of realistic expectations towards AI, of consistency in the face of ebbing and flowing hypes, and of thinking and articulating experienced pain points they want to solve with a solution rather than simply asking for demos. The group argued that the age-old discussion of build vs buy is pointless given the experienced hardship of building tech for procurement. Relying on internal IT teams to develop solutions might be just as sobering an experience as in the past.
The Cirtuo Procurement Forum is by practitioners for practitioners and focused on networking and learning from each other. Chief Procurement Officers and senior leaders shared their perspectives on how to move from good to great, from intent to action, how to build a case for technology investment, and how to keep momentum once the first strategies have been developed.
Sean Park, CPO, and David Simmons, Global Procurement Director, of Arm shared how they took Procurement at Arm from a tactical focus to a strategic perspective through a high focus on customer service and a heavy focus on digital technologies in their session ‘Making Digital Transformation Happen: Learnings & Tips’. Changing the mindset from reactive to proactive and putting the best people on the job to do strategies with the business instead of for or to them created a good sense of the importance of leadership for making transformation happen.
Jami Bliss, VP Global Procurement Commercial and Technology at GSK, and Matthew Jones, Director Procurement Transformation at Future Purchasing, explored how to get ‘From Good To Great: Making the Case For Investing In Procurement’ in an all-smiles fireside chat. No matter if you want to invest in developing in people and skills or in a digital category strategy solution, Jami urged us to think about the nature of the investment: is it defensive and helps better manage risk or protect assets, offensive to drive efficiency, innovation, and savings, or a mix of both? And what does it take to achieve it in terms of change? The key takeaway: always focus on the outcome and add a number to it. As procurement doesn’t have substantial discretionary spend, tech needs to help Procurement take out costs through efficiencies and savings. Tying it back to business needs and objectives has helped make the case for Cirtuo, as it helps people collaborate more effectively, guides them through the process, captures critical knowledge, and ultimately, ensures more spend under strategy.
Selena Kam, Director of the Procurement COE at Danone North America, discussed the importance of ‘Keeping Momentum: How to ensure Category Strategies Get Implemented’. She compared the challenge of getting the transformation started and executed with the challenge of planning a trip with your friends. Setting up the group chat is easy, but aligning expectations, booking the trip, and enjoying it requires overcoming many obstacles. And while individuals might be able to pull it off and make it look easy, organizations are interested in predictability, repeatability, and consistency, not one-hit wonders or individual superstars. Building a governance approach, making a plan, testing approaches on a small scale, and then executing at scale were her recommendations for creating and keeping momentum. Improved data, communication, and knowledge management came as a bonus.
Jack Spencer, Head of S2C at Siemens Energy, spoke about how working with Cirtuo helped with ‘Achieving Better Business Alignment’. He outlined how Cirtuo helps identify the right stakeholders to talk to and structure the conversations, which helps improve how we talk to them. He highlighted the importance of investing in soft skills and building relationships over time to create amplifying effects between the technology and the people.
In the final panel discussion ‘Creating Traction, Taking Action: Practical tips for capitalizing on digital Category Management Technology, Selena Kam, Fabian Bigus, Head of Indirect Procurement at tesa, and Jim Abbott, Procurement Strategy, Operational Excellence, Digital Transformation at Astra Zeneca, shared their tips on how to get the most out of working with Cirtuo. The panel agreed that Ciruo has helped category teams better articulate what they do, why they do it, and how they are going about it. From mapping out stakeholders to capturing knowledge and leveraging the full set of value levers, Cirtuo has reduced barriers for developing category strategies for junior category managers and helped senior experts become more articulate. But the real benefit that Fabian Bigus pointed out was that Cirtuo can help make strategic work part of the daily routine when linking strategy and execution with the integrated initiative management module.
Based on the positive feedback from 2024, the Cirtuo Procurement Forum offered multiple opportunities for getting actively involved. Dr. Elouise Epstein of Kearney ran a masterclass on AI agents and how they can actively support Category Managers in increasing their personal productivity. She demonstrated how we can build our own agents with freely available tools from Google to support our market and competitive research.
On top, breakout sessions covered key topics discussed during the day: how to effectively partner with stakeholders, how to build a compelling business case, and how to execute projects effectively to set them up for success. While you usually expect some people to lead the discussion and others to stand by, the level of active participation showed that all topics hit a critical nerve. We will discuss the findings in a separate article.
Category Management continues to be the main source for supply chain resilience and the key differentiator for leading Procurement teams. Across practical presentations from Cirtuo clients and various panel discussions, the most interesting realization is an encouraging one: the availability of more tech results in an increasing focus on what is uniquely human. People are at the core of transformation. And collaboration, storytelling, business partnering, and soft skills are what distinguish great teams from good ones.
Procurement leaders must make a clear case for continued investment into people and digital tools - whether to mitigate rising risks (defense), to seize new value opportunities (offense), or both. Success hinges on knowing your strategic play, committing to measurable value, and clearly communicating the transformation journey ahead.
The advice from practitioners was therefore very clear:
After two days of discussing practical ways to make category strategies actionable, the real question participants were left with when closing the conference was, therefore, a personal one:
Are you ready to unlock value from category strategies, or will you keep complaining about the increasing complexity and turmoil we are all facing? We have the tools, we know what needs to be done - but we need to leave the comfort of knowing and embrace the unknown - we need to act.
The full session recordings are now available. Experience the Cirtuo Procurement Forum 2025 and start making category strategies actionable with Cirtuo!
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