{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"BTW EP 25: The S-Word: Why Procurement Must Stop Saying \u201cSavings\u201d (and What to Replace it With)","description":"Procurement\u2019s biggest measurement problem isn\u2019t that \u201csavings\u201d is incomplete. It\u2019s that \u201csavings\u201d has become a substitute for truth. In the first Buy: The Way\u2026To Purposeful Procurement episode of 2026, co-hosts Philip Ideson and Rich Ham unveil the first of the show\u2019s new procurement \u201cBuy-laws.\u201d It\u2019s the one that almost every serious practitioner agrees with, but very few organizations are ready to operationalize: replace savings with defined value. That doesn\u2019t mean adding a few extra KPIs in addition to savings. It means removing the word entirely and replacing it with a primary metric that includes verified spend reduction and revenue generation, plus company-specific priorities like emissions reduction, process improvement, resilience, risk reduction, and anything else the business actually cares about.  To help map what this kind of \u201cvalue\u201d can and should include, Phil and Rich are joined by Omer Abdullah, co-founder of The Smart Cube and co-author of Risk and Your Supply Chain: Preparing for the Next Global Crisis. Omer has spent decades close to the function, advising teams, building intelligence services around procurement decisions, and now working at the intersection of startups, go-to-market strategy, and what he calls a \u201cpost-AI\u201d future for procurement. The idea of \u201cpost-AI\u201d matters more than it sounds. Omer isn\u2019t talking about a world where AI fades away. He\u2019s talking about the moment when AI becomes a hygiene factor \u2013 embedded, expected, and no longer a differentiator. The result is uncomfortable: once AI takes the transactional load, procurement doesn\u2019t automatically become \u201cmore strategic.\u201d Not unless leaders define what that actually means, what outcomes it should produce, and how to measure those outcomes without defaulting back to the simplest (and most misleading) number on the page. The conversation also goes straight at one of procurement\u2019s most corrosive incentives: short-termism. The function keeps making long-term sacrifices for short-term wins because the system asks it to. Rich calls it a \u201cscourge,\u201d and Omer lays out what a healthier alternative could look like. He recommends a scorecard that includes in-year expectations, multi-year outcomes that reflect how value compounds over time, and a controlled level of discretionary evaluation to capture the contributions that matter but refuse to sit neatly inside a spreadsheet cell.  Underneath all of this is a truth that the episode doesn\u2019t dodge: none of it works without executive support. The CFO and CEO have to buy into procurement\u2019s expanded definition of value. Procurement can\u2019t wait to be understood; they have to be sold. Procurement is a business within a business, and the C-suite is its most important customer. If leaders don\u2019t see the function\u2019s potential, it\u2019s on procurement to advocate, educate, and prove (through better definitions and better scorekeeping) that the status quo isn\u2019t merely outdated. It\u2019s actively harmful. Links: Omer Abdullah on LinkedIn Rich Ham on LinkedIn Learn more at FineTuneUs.com   ","author_name":"Art of Procurement","author_url":"http:\/\/artofprocurement.com","html":"