hi it's Mark Pereira here from DPW live in Amsterdam and uh I'm blessed to have uh Michael dwit here from Walmart uh talking about both his journey as a CPO but also talking about some of the changes in terms of technology and particularly in AI so uh Michael welcome to the uh the conference uh what's your first experience of the day thanks Mark well um I haven't had breakfast yet so that's uh still trying to get warmed up to the day but I have had a couple cups of coffee so keep so far so good Fu that with it as well but before we start the team had kind of briefed me in in some of your background so uh uh you're not straight coming in from a corporate world into the world of procurement you've come from a more military background well that was where I started in the air force that was long time ago I've been in procurement for quite a few years now any of the attributes from the the military service that come into procurement into a positive way that's a interesting question I think so actually I mean a discipline that I learned in the military is good for best practice approach in procurement I think it probably applied a little bit more when I was in Industries like medical device rather than retail because it's more serious y but uh yeah it's uh I think I brought some some things from there excellent EXC and what's your role at uh at Walmart now you're you're looking after the kind of Center of Excellence uh around the procurement function yeah I lead procurement indirect procurement for Walmart International naal so everything outside the US oh and I also have a global center of excellence and under that is our technology enablement team or our digital transformation team as we call it and actually that's for all of Walmart because we're we're supporting the us as well from a procurement Tech standpoint and how big is the the team and the the reporting line you have total direct and indirect because in the markets they report indirectly to me but then I have my own team sitting in Bentonville it's about 200 plus so the technology side obviously is a key part of the role and I guess that's constantly evolving with Walmart and the the consumer side it's uh I guess it's in the essence of the organization how do you look at the technology I guess current stack and the future stack and I guess part of being here today is to look at some of the exciting new tech coming through yeah for sure so first I'll just say that procurement it's something I've been waiting for being a procurement guy for last 20 years I've been hearing you know this technolog is coming never really came until the last few years so I feel a bit rejuvenated now that you know all these AI Technologies for procurement are here it it is exciting and I'd say we started our journey probably about four years ago starting with with AI negotiations with pactum and um you know since then we've we've really done a lot of analysis on I mean there's so many companies out here right and I think one there's probably not going to be nearly as many in the next few years so we're really trying to look at a combination of things when we're looking at our future Tech stack which is the technology itself but also how broad it covers because we don't want to end up with 20 different solutions right that guess just address a really small part of the process guess that's the risk isn't it you have multiple Co co-pilot across the uh the function yeah that's right and point Solutions just on pack him for for those who don't know um this is looking at automating the negotiation process right negotiating with a bot with a bot this must be interesting for your suppliers how did they first react when you uh you took that up that was actually our biggest concern about it is what will the suppliers think because you know we already may have a reputation of being too hard on our suppliers so we were worried about that but um they really like it in fact over 80% of the survey the the suppliers that we survey said that they'd rather negotiate with a bot than a human so well know which I don't know what that says about us but um yeah that it it really you know our concerns were were not founded uh they they like negotiating with the B and that's that's embedded in the business and just a corol part of the way you do well I would say I don't know about embedded because when you do pactum it's more of a campaign so you pick one area you know one scope you pick a set of suppliers and then you launch it and then you get the results back and then you look for your next one so it's not you don't set it up once and then it just keeps going you set it up you know you find new areas of spend to do it but we've we've done a lot it's basically one after another and it's it's uh well received by our business stakeholders and when you look at the AI landscape I guess you can look at all the different parts of the operating model there particular areas that you're you're now kind of focusing on yeah I mean one of the big buzzwords now is is orchestration and we are looking at at that we're trying to actually you know looking ahead we want to get away from Big implementations right um I won't mention specific company names but we think we can be aware from some of those companies in a few years with the road map or the technologies that are coming through I think a combination of orchestration along with some other um what we call engines we still need an RFP engine we we still look at things like category strategy development but that orchestration layer is going to sit on top it's going to find the right information inside of Walmart and outside of Walmart and it's going to give us whatever we want so it'll be that co-pilot where we ask it hey you know find us our contracts that are coming up due in 60 days and it'll give you the information it'll tell us our supplier spend information um so basically you're just interacting with this you know UI and it's just telling you the information that you need just by asking it it's a fascinating category and uh I wish I'd uh listen to the feedback from cpos and their their customers for the years in the past I maybe gone down that room myself because it's it's the Simplicity of kind of removing the the clunky interfaces that we've had and the multiple ones yeah um but again it's making the right choices on these it's uh I think we've had most most of the providers here so it's going to be interesting to see how many companies take away uh kind of further requirements and explore it in the future as well um you talked about the category strategy side as well have you have you looked at how AI might look at kind of supplier Market strategy and category strategy as well yeah we've been using an AI category strategy tech for about 3 years now and it's gone really well I mean we love it and um again it it has that co-pilot where it walks helps it asks questions to the sourcing professional and draws from the information that we have both internally and in the market and it helps us to speed up our development of category strategies in fact it's reduced our it's reduced it by about half of what it used to take are people to do category strategies so and they're better and the and the team uh embracing it is uh there's no push back or is there a little bit of change management involved a little bit of change management I mean to get them away from spreadsheets and you know uh other documents but you know you do have to really go all in you can't just dip your toe in it so we launched it we set kpis we track results and you know it's not official as a we don't count it as a category strategy unless it's in this technology so um they get a zero if they don't have it in the technology so that helps as well and uh any other areas that you've you've kind of looked at and I guess some some of these a lot of the companies here will and I'm seeing it some of the uh agreements we have no longer SAS agreements they're AI Agreements are there things that you've had to change as you brought more ai ai companies into Walmart in terms of onboarding them but also implementing yeah onboarding been interesting working with our Tech team with all these new AI techs um it takes we have a process that takes some time to get through uh especially with AI Technologies so that does have an effect of how quickly we can move but the tech team has also been very supportive and we've been very open about what we're looking at doing I think one good thing is that they're not really focused on this space they have so much other things to do that they're fine with us going out and looking for AI technology so um they've been supportive but uh yeah we we've been able to You know despite that we've been able to move pretty quickly and to answer your you first question I'd say you know we looked at we've piloted other things so for example uh contract redlining so automatic redlining where a supplier will send in a contract and it'll Redline it and send it right back without humans being involved our legal team loves that in fact they tell us that that reduced their time by 80% for doing red line so that was very helpful um that one's an interesting one though because we really need legal to play a big part in that and they haven't really um even though they love it haven't made it a priority so we haven't really you know pushed that as well um but you know other areas we're looking at still contract life cycle management so that's the redlining aspect but of course you have a broader you know creation of contract process plus then drawing that information from the contracts um we're looking at Technologies to do those as well the obligations and the Performance Management against them yeah yeah the full cycle um well I think you know we had the electronic signatures which I I'd probably say in the last 20 years is probably the the biggest change that we've had in the procurement world because it's a a triple win for suppliers procurement and the business speed so if we can get the red lining and the other parts of the contract management we can start engaging with those suppliers early yeah for sure so the theme of the event is 10x as you know kind of e exponential thinking um as we start looking at 2030 which is scarily only five years away the decades going quickly where do you see uh AI kind of in the operating model of procurement but also in at Walmart as well yeah I think you know again going back to this co-pilot concept where you know we you'll have one UI that really you interact with that will walk you through the whole process and it will draw from other Technologies other you know data inside and and external to the company but it's going to make the process so much easier and it's interesting too because then I think if it's so easy and you just have to ask it questions do you really need to know a lot about procurement so we're thinking a lot about you know the the what kind of people are we going to need in the future and how is this going to affect our our headcount and our experience and our you know who we're looking for from a hiring stand point so I think that's going to change dramatically as well yeah I was having uh dinner with some cpos last night and uh we were talking about how you recruit people now you know are you recruiting people into procurement function for you know their background or their willingness to use AI to augment themselves in the role yeah and it may be more towards the latter um when you do but also you know we've got some big challenges we're trying to solve with procurement we've got the whole sustainability piece and and get inter Net Zero so hopefully some of the automation augmentation will allow our very clever people to solve other problems as well yeah yeah we've already started hiring non-procurement people to you know look at our technology and I think there's pros and cons there but I think that'll continue to evolve yeah I guess I'm not sure maybe I need to make a prediction of 2030 but uh the parts of the co-pilots the operating model maybe more generalist and co-pilots that's really specialized in you know those particular functions is is probably where we're we're looking at do do you have any prompt Engineers like looking probably more at the chat GTP and and exploring how you can look at your own data sets and and so forth we do yeah we're we're starting to invest more in that because up to this point and still a lot of the Technologies when we say AI are more machine learning right but we're starting to now expand into gen Ai and that changes things also and so yes we are looking at prompt engineering and how do we make sure we're asking the right questions get the right information out of it that's another Evolution I guess as we move forward yeah and the speed is you know of these models coming out it's uh uh you know the iPhone's looking a little bit boring every year there's small tweaks but the a models are transforming within six 12 months yeah uh is there a do you start thinking about that in the strategy because normally you would have maybe a decade to look at a big transformation and now we're seeing maybe uh two years the the same sort of transformation in the AI models and potentially where both solution providers are making bets but also the the likes of Microsoft and open AI as well is that somewhere in the the mindset both from the procurement side or or maybe even from you know Walmart as a whole because I guess it's touching every function yeah you mean from a gen looking at gen specifically yeah that's another interesting one because I know Walmart has its own gen you know that we developed internally and they want us to use that but it's not really specific for procurement so you know these other Technologies it's set up already specifically for procurement getting the right data you know plugging into the right data data of course is a huge part of that right so that's another thing we need to figure out is let make sure we have our data because whatever we're talking about geni or machine learning it needs to plug into the right data um so yeah I mean we're trying to figure that whole thing out and I think it's an interesting theme around the data we we're quite often relying on the uh Erp to uh as our kind of Master data record on these things and as as the space changes is whether it's going to be sitting in there or another records going to be uh in there as well yeah what's your recommendation for uh a procurement function looking to to make their first step of using AI or starting to transform their their technology stack um again you're a very large organization with a lot more resources but uh there'll be a few who've just got one site provider in there yeah um and if we look at all the spider graphs and Maps there's just a a huge amount of kind of Point solutions they could go after have you got any guidance that you could share yeah um it can be overwhelming when you look at all the Technologies and you know a lot of times it's uh people end up doing nothing because they don't know which one to use or where to jump in I would say just pick something and try it out I mean that's how we did it I also tell you there's nobody really that knows knows much about what's happening um that are are going to be really helpful to talk to so if you talk to other companies yes they've you know there may be some companies like Walmart that have tried some things but everybody has different needs right so you can't really depend on others to teach you specifically where to start or how to start we just started by doing Pilots we looked at interesting Technologies we also look at the the vision and the strategy and the road map of those Technologies which is important we look at the leadership of those companies to make sure that they know what they're talking about a lot of these companies are tech companies and they don't know a lot about procurement that worries us a little bit others are procurement companies that have figured out technology on how to how to do procurement so we like those companies more so we look at all those elements when we're trying to figure out who to Pilot or who to to test with but just jump in and do it and we picked small areas we piloted we got success and then of course you know you spread it from there um but yeah you get you just have to jump in because uh you're already behind really if you haven't done anything yet I'd say and it sounds like you're kind of working like a VC I mean you're talking about you know what's the vision of the company how they're funded the leadership team you you're bringing in quite a lot of VC backing because you're a I guess you're a first customer taking them on and and maybe a first customer or a third and fourth rather than 100th one in some of these companies as well yeah that's true most of the companies we've worked with so far we're customer number one all right so uh that's also advantageous of course because we help to guide where they're going from a technology standpoint so that's the other Advantage for jumping in quickly with some of these startup companies and there so even here now this year CU I was here last year but I think there's I don't know 40 at least 40 new startup companies from what I understand here that weren't here last year so um still a lot of opportunity to jump in with somebody brand new and to help guide where they're going you know that would be more aligned with the needs of your own organization so I guess if uh if you are working and your you know number first customer or in the first 10 customers you also need to to put enough time in there to to work with them but also get the right mindset of not saying it needs a blue button here or a red one there but kind of get into what your unmet needs or the problems that need to be Sol more strategic for sure yeah interesting and do you take a position where you're uh an early adopter on some technologies and a a fast follower on others I think we're more in the mindset of early adopter you know across the board now we're not worried about you know whether others have tested it or whether it's been successful we're just looking at and you know and and we've been Pioneers in you know several areas already so I think we're we're continuing that to try to just look for how what's emerging you know what's this me going to mean for the future how does this come together for our Tech stack in the future and we have a vision of we think what that's going to look like um in the future which you know again I go back to this kind of orchestration or co-pilot that sits on top and then we have some key technologies that actually build the information underneath that it draws from that together with data internally and externally and we have a uh nice SAS um you know set of technologies that are low code no code that we can you know if needed plug and play um in the future so very low implementation and I guess as we we move with the the apis and and the orchestration layer that knowledge of your data is all important um because it could be distributed in multiple systems and you're trying to bring it together in there so you you I guess you have teams who are looking at the kind of the architecture of your data across the multiple ones we do yeah that's another thing I'd say is you know everybody's data is terrible so that's another thing that shouldn't hold you back from you know trying these Technologies because you can figure out how to get through it get around it so don't let that be a dependency on whether you start or don't start with a technology as data it's a mess I mean you know and it'll continue to get better over time and I think you know using these Technologies actually expedites that it makes it you know kind of forces you to get your data better and it's going to be a continuous journey I don't see it becoming perfect anytime soon and um for a smaller organization where we've got a a procurement leadership team maybe a couple of kind of core Technologies in there how would you recommend they start moving to a a center of or a role that looks at the technology and the data stack what would your your advice to be for a smaller organization I think it's really important I mean in a way we I feel like we act like a small organization even though of course we're not but in Walmart International we have you know 18 countries that we do business with and each one of those countries is a small company within our company right some of them smaller than others um you know Chile for example is one of our small small market so that's where we test and pilot some of these Technologies so I think um it's not probably dissimilar from you know a small company but put somebody in that role probably close to 5 years ago that just looked at Technologies and analyzed them helped us find the right ones Implement them and then make sure we're using them efficiently and effectively and I think that's been probably one of my better decisions since I've been with Walmart is picking that person that specifically and exclusively is looking at these AI technologies that that's really helped us be successful guess that's one area we do do need the Deep expertise as we uh we change the operating model uh fascinating what's that role called is it got a a fancy AI name or uh uh not really I mean it's digital transformation okay but you know we it's funny because when I brought it in I mean it was in the early days I'd say of the AI Tech and we didn't really know what it was going to do or I mean I found the right person that was open to you know figure it out with me but um I guess that's important as well is you know you can't have somebody that is wants a you know clear definition of what their role is going to be and how it's going to evolve I mean that's just not possible you need somebody that's you know adventurous and willing to you know take on new challenges opportunities they come from a tech background or a procurement background um yeah it was kind of a combination of both I don't I'm not sure it matters you know either way I mean driven and passionate about learning yeah exactly yeah and as you look at uh we talked about kind of the technology landscape orchestration and intake is a another piece are there are there as you look at 2030 and Beyond and you look at the procurement function and I guess you're going to help deliver that new oper ready model um exciting things that you're looking at challenging things uh that you're looking at that the businesses need need to solve as well yeah I don't know if there's anything new or different I mean I feel like you know again I've been in procurement for a long time and it really hasn't changed I mean what we do and uh the challenges that we Face haven't really changed or evolved I mean um I think these Technologies are helping us to do them better but um yeah I don't know that there's you know any any new challenges or different challenges that I'm seeing in the future versus what we've seen before it's still I think all about you know having the right uh processes best practices first I mean you know that's important right because these Technologies like category strategy development for example we're using um you know an AI tech there we had a strong process in place first right okay before we brought the technology on I think it's difficult to bring a technology on without people understanding the process or you know knowing why that process is important so I think that's key is you know you you have to have best practice process and then you find the technology to enable that process right clicking on the switch with the app is not going to solve the problem that uh because then nobody knows you know they don't understand why it should be used or how it should be used so it's not not very helpful interesting um and uh I I'm sure you've seen the logos uh any particular categories of technology that you're looking at other than theur orchestration later yeah I mean CLM still one that we're trying to figure out that's uh still a mess for us um you know it's it's done differently some some have processes some don't some have technology some don't you know across Walmart so that's definitely one we still need to figure out and there's some exciting again new texts you know in in this space I would say other than that we are looking at what I'd call autonomous sourcing which is a little bit different than the one I mentioned before which was pactum because pactum is we call it campaigns right so you pick a you pick a space you set it up you launch it then you pick the next space autonomous sourcing there's Tech that you set it up once in certain areas usually your smaller spent areas and then it just goes and negotiates automatically so when you have a need it'll go out get three bids for you with qualified suppliers and it'll automatically do it by taking a humans out of the loop so i' be fascinating I know there's at least one or two that's been around for a few years and and quite a few more coming in there and I think they they're very open about where the machine learning is on on these and uh how much Automotion they going but they're going into more complex categories as well so that's right I probably need a bit of a Refresh on that as well um we're going to have to wrap up soon but uh one piece of advice on running a POC so you've obviously you you've kind of nailed that down and it's a key part of anyone taking the kind of new technologies in to proof to to test them uh anything you would look at as a setting up a proof of concept that uh lines up for Success uh at least in that process doesn't mean you adopt the technology but at least test it in an effective way yeah I mean few things come to mind but I'd say it's really important to find a willing participant find somebody that's excited in the business about this technology and can you know it can be a champion right because there are some people that are more some individuals in leadership positions that are more interested than others so if you find that right person that really helps with a pilot and then once it's successful they'll help selling it there's nothing better than somebody outside of procurement selling something in procurement right because others listen to those people more than maybe a procurement person brilliant brilliant well Michael thank you very much for your time I hope you enjoy the rest of the day and uh well hopefully see you in New York in June so um closer to you so you don't have to do all the travels um and uh it' be good to catch up with you uh at the end of the day or or tomorrow and just see the new technologies coming through and uh some of those golden highlights as well but thank you for your time and uh that's us done for today and uh we'll catch up soon thank you thank you cheers cheers [Music]