EP 10: Supplier Management as a Connected Discipline W/ Jesse Lee

Speaker A: Hello, I am Jothy Hartley, Art of Procurement's Director of Digital Enablement. Today I would like to welcome long term friend Jesse Lee, the co founder, uh, and CEO of Brooklyn Solutions for a category conversation about supplier management. These conversations are an opportunity for our community to learn from the companies recognized in the 2025, 26 ProcureTech 100. Welcome Jesse.

Speaker B: Why thank you Jyoti. Great to see you again.

Speaker A: Yeah, great to see you too. Again. Okay Jesse, let's start by getting to know you a little bit and I'm going to ask you the, the most famous question in the world probably did you find procurement or did procurement find you?

Speaker B: Right. Wow, great question. Um, and with a clear answer in our case, uh, without question, we found procurements. Um, we come. The core early group comes from um, a SaaS product and community that served a CFO, CIO really. And um, brought some transparency to all that money, right? How is that money spent? Where can we spend it more wisely perhaps? And, and in that hunt for uh, for uh, opportunities for cost optimization, our travels, um, which the software didn't necessarily light up, um, but that was. With transparency comes those hopes and aspirations. Right? So uh, the answer that we found the, the, the fertile ground, the most fertile ground for, for getting yet more efficient across that technical estate for the big enterprise was really supply chain, right? I mean for, for reasons that kept repeating themselves in our travels over the years, over a solid decade, just about there is, there's a set of reasons against why are we just not getting that maximum value for money. And our travels found most of the answers by a long margin. And that supply chain, right, there's, there's just some patterns of, of behaviors, patterns of operation. The, the, the ramifications of not having great transparency and having too few people looking after the balance of business versus business needs and risk appetite and tech spend and resilience and such, um, we just didn't find enough uh, potential there and um, well enough enough coverage there for the realization of the potential to drive maximum value for money spent in that supply chain. So we found it as a field of opportunity and as a place that wasn't quite realizing what we think of it as has its strategic potential. And after seeing these patterns over and over and after being you know, product people, we thought okay, we just gotta close this down. And uh, no one else is doing it. Um, so, so we um, that's why we came together and why Brooklyn exists. And uh, it was through us finding that field of opportunities, the way we

Speaker A: look at it that's really insightful and that's, that's really interesting and we are going to get into quite a bit of that in, in a second or two, in a minute or two. Um but just to I guess go, go back in time a little bit. Jesse. So m. You and I know each other. We've, We've uh been around the block a few times and we've, we've come across each other um in a few one or two or three maybe instances. Um I think it'd be really helpful to, to share what your background is and how you came to to to find procurement because you are unusual in that most people that we talk to the other way around. Um so, so what they say procurement

Speaker B: found me and uh, I responded. They usually say okay yeah right.

Speaker A: That's right yeah. So what exactly is your background then?

Speaker B: All right, well um. Since you asked I, I am if uh we go back. Well it's a broad background which is now kind of helping with procurement. I've got a engineering base. Um I'm a non practicing but trained lawyer for the contract end of everything kind of makes the help send and in the business um and uh spent geez maybe somewhere between a third and a half of my career doing consulting either technical or management kind of consulting and years uh and years ago or as part of the dot com boom really in California and Seattle and USA around 2007 um moved into pure product, you know venture backed product and uh ultimately brought forward an application with with four other co founders. That which I'd alluded to before that was all about transparency. Transparency about what's in the tech world at the time the CIO CFO of it. Uh what are we spending that money on, what did the predecessor spend it on? What's the plan to spend it going forward and really quickly get into what are the what's everything cost, what are the unit rates and what are the effective rates based on what I use versus what I spent so that I'm ready in case anything goes wrong. And it starting in an era where a lot of self self uh powered services came up through the era of services becoming a thing universal ah Lingua Franca and then outsourcing into the cloud. The cloud becoming a thing and it ever the pace of that which becomes a commodity um where the bleeding edge of it. We just live through various different ages of that of course artificial intelligence being the current age um or the current wave. So um going back at good ways. Um my background would be product software as a service product for the enterprise and then other people around in, in the business directly serving some of those same leaders, C suite leaders and heads of this and that and um, but ultimately with a maniacal focus on efficiency, uh, transparency to drive the efficiency and then actual tracked through decisions to make some changes, sometimes modest and sometimes more transformative to uh, lock in on, you know, cutting edge capability, hopefully some differentiation for the customer and, and tight as possible. Um, OPEX given, given the balance of a innovation spend and, and needing to be in control of the business.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And tamp down risk. So all that stuff together. I mean how long are you going to talk about that before finding procurement which is always trying to balance that because over the years suppliers every year it's more so. And going in, isn't it going to turn around? Your business depends on your suppliers and everything is getting more specialized and that's only going to keep going. You focus on what you do well and you rely on your suppliers to power your business. And so we saw it, we just saw that as an inexorable um, uh, dynamic that's going to keep going. And so everybody has a supplier management challenge that's only getting bigger. If your business is getting bigger, that's it. So, so if that's what your roadmap entails, well then supplier management is going to be ever more important to you. So that's sort of, that's sort of why um, out of that uh, that world I described before into what we think that is really happening now and where all these companies are going. Well there's just so much strategic potential and purpose and whoever's got that remit to manage all those suppliers. Right. That's what we're passionate about. And so.

Speaker A: Mhm. Yeah, spoken like a true engineer and a lawyer right there.

Speaker B: Yeah, right, right.

Speaker A: Mhm. Okay. So thank you for that Jesse. So if we think about supplier management then as a, as a category, as a function functional area of most procurement and supply chain, um, departments and teams. How would you describe the business objectives and the scope boundaries of supply management?

Speaker B: The business objectives and the scope boundaries. Let me just do them one at a time. The business objectives. We um, think in terms of what I mentioned already at the highest level there's a certain strategic reason for procurement to exist at all. And we kind of think of it, it's always the same. And that is to accelerate the roadmap of your business. Right. That's what you do. You buy the products and services that power the business. Services that your business people need to succeed. Right. To get the competitive advantage run lean and mean and all of that. So your, the whole company depends on this group so that it can accelerate its own roadmap. Right. So we got to protect that and, and there's an expectation of do it and there should be to do it lean and efficiently and chase maximum value for money. But in balance with, hey, our whole roadmap that we're pursuing doubtless rests on the shoulders of these suppliers and some mix. So we have to make sure all that works and keeps working and can handle wobbles and is resilient.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You said that about business objectives and he said um, the scope boundaries. I think you mean what are these people doing? Like what are they responsible for and what they're not. Um, boy, it's funny like as much as, as I'm talking about, and we care about the scope boundaries and, and we see an aspiration of hey, free up some of my time, our team's time so that we have more time to do those great things. Sometimes that happens, sometimes the scope just increases and it's, it's about tactically do more. So an example probably over the last two, three years we've seen your job is supplier management. Now your job is also onboarding. We don't know if we want to uh, bring that supplier in, but we're interested in what we do. We're running an rfx. We're going to choose one probably so you know about what all our suppliers have and do. Even the things we don't buy off them. You tell us, right? You give us a head start and you run and maybe you run that and uh, and you have all the whole process for bringing them in and running all this capturing the inherent risk of this new service. We want doing a DDQ for the unmanaged risk of that supplier. Um, hopefully you've got some games, some, some uh, some competence and skill and managing that, that, that risk. So we get to a lower residual risk profile for that supplier we brought in somehow tied to the obligations of things they're going to owe us if we pay them and all that together has expanded the scope of these people. You know, you, you know our suppliers. So talk to us about, help us find the next ones, help us assess them, help us make them compete with each other and then help us pull them in. So this we see the scope of our users is grabbed around all of that, uh, encompassing the beginning of third party risk management into the contracting event into, and then continuing where we started with them the whole life of that uh, in life management of the relationship, really. Um, the contract. M. Birth certificate, in our view, from relationship together, hopefully.

Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Yeah. And again. Yes. And what I think what you've just described there is the, the breadth of responsibilities that somebody that's in that role has and. Right. Um, and it seems to be. You talk about what it sounds like is scope creep almost, but I think it's m. Maybe a, A natural evolution of that scope creep because it's the right thing to do. So if I, if we just think about category management as a holistic, um, maybe other function then. Or other capability of a procurement team. Why is that important now?

Speaker B: Why is category management important right now? Uh, well, boy, um, we think category management would be important because the procurement, if the procurement arm is now about something having to do with assessing who's doing what that could be useful for our business and to power our roadmap. Uh, and then, uh, uh, who might take over some of the functions in our existing supplier base and changes we might make. At the key of all of it is operational resilience. Right. So I've been talking so far about change. Incomes change, things change. But, but, but we need to stay resilient. The business must persist. And we think that you say, why is it important now? Because the regulators are catching up. You know, the years ago, the regulators said, hey, no more outsourcing. The data challenge to those suppliers, you are responsible. You take a customer's data. GDPR is here in Europe, right? In uk that means you, you cannot outsource your responsibility. So you better make sure your whole estate handles, uh, that data responsibly.

Speaker A: So, um, Jesse, you talked about operational resilience.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: What does that mean, um, in your, in your mind and, or just for our listeners as well, what does that mean for you?

Speaker B: It means, I mean, to us, to me, I guess just to me, it means the service continues even as the underpinnings take some hits or some wobbles. You know, if the boat gets stuck in the Suez Canal, our company still operates, um, the, uh, the.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: So we have that. We have practices built in and are ready for a bit of a rainy day. Right. Maybe we bought more than we need. Maybe we sourced from more than one place. So when the one boat gets stuck, we've got a few others, et cetera. Um, and we can keep running. So that's sort of. That is, we can keep, we can keep bringing in that which we need to power the services in parallel. We are generally assured that, that the data is protected. We're talking about gdpr. If we leap right, it leap over a lot that's happened into dora Digital Operational Resilience acts even more in Europe only so far. Um, inspection and demands from regulators saying in this category of uh, things where your data is in someone else's cloud, take all these steps to make sure that you're in control and the risk, the residual risk is low because you have all these business controls. So uh, I suppose that leaps to mind first. Right. There is always some fragility in a supply chain, the power of artificial intelligence and okay, now what's happening with that data and where is it getting uh, um, leveraged and how will it echo beyond what I wanted to use it for, if I even use that technology? All that is key for protecting information and ultimately yeah, we have to, we have to protect and keep, keep the business operating. There's the resilience angle and then in my opinion, and then um, on top of that there must be time there, there must be time to, to pursue innovation and handle change well. Or else you're just not getting down that business roadmap fast enough.

Speaker A: Yeah, you're right.

Speaker B: It's a lot to keep a track of. It's a lot to do. Uh, it needs a holistic approach or, or you'll be in complaining about the silo that you sit in which we hear.

Speaker A: Well, yes, exactly. So if we think about you from a Brooklyn Solutions point of view then um, how, how does Brooklyn think about um, the challenges that a procurement, that the procurement teams face now? Um, and they're definitely grown and they just seem to be growing. Um, how does Brooklyn think about how to approach and recommend um, ideas, solutions? How do you solve for these challenges that procurement teams are facing now?

Speaker B: Right. Um, we, we think of it ah, strategically, which I've spoken a bit about and then also tactically and so the, you know I talked about strategically accelerating the roadmap. I guess this is a. Procurement is a consensus building org. Right. Compared to other, you know, head of different functions, procurement is not sitting on a heck of a lot of discretionary budget. It's someone else's business need which justifies the procurement of the thing to power the service. So, so if you got a strategic purpose to fulfill, we think well, a challenge we see, since you asked it this way, is getting that buy in to really fulfill the function. Because sometimes there's a little bit more of a cost envelope if we're really going to do a good job on these things. How does procurement articulate what it does and it doesn't all sound like extras and nice to haves and puppies and rainbows and vitamins as opposed to aspirins as we say in software. Right. Solving for what would be great but you know, more painful things always get the attention and the budget. So we see a challenge that procurement chronically has and in getting a seat at the decision making table like at board level and such and so that they can really accelerate into their function. And then tactically, how do we in Brooklyn think of it as underpins our philosophy really? If we're going to help and it's not going to cost the earth, then bring some orchestration, you know, bring some digitization. So um, we can pull people so that as we're covering a holistic patch of work, we can lift people out from being stuck in these point solutions. Right. And I said silos, right? We, we see these people. A point person lives in risk management way over here. Point person person lives in contract management over here. There might be an SRM trying to understand and get the knowledge and the, or an orchestration and transparency and interconnectedness of this supplier management challenge is the way we think about it. We're not here to be another deep, deep point solution and then you know, establish another silo, um, or even have a core identity and DNA to do one thing, but then say, oh well, you know, we kind of do it all because we connect to all those things. No, you know, this is, this uh, this whole thing needs some care and some attention by those who suffer all at once. And it needs to be brought forward together as a, as a packaged unit that's well orchestrated, we think. So that's how we, that's how philosophically we look at it. And that's why the, the, the product suites come up the way it has it, it reflects what I just said essentially because that's how we look about,

Speaker A: look at it going back to um, something you said around the, I guess the disconnected point people across the different functional areas, um, from an end to end process point of view, if you think about supplier data, um, and across the different processes that needs to happen with that supplier data, whether it's company names, whether it's locations, whether it's categories, um, whatever coding structure is used to allocate to it, um, what, what does Brooklyn see as a, as a potential way, um, of connecting those different dots across the business just in that use case alone regarding supplier data?

Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. I mean, well, um, let's see, let's take one example because we could we could go in a bunch of different directions into supplier data as pertains the relationship managers or the contract manager, the compliance people that have to report out that data to regulators or to the risk managers. Let's maybe just talk about data available to multiple peoples, pays dividends. Let's say it this way. You know, you could think of a contract as a document that expresses a value exchange, but also an allocation of risk. Most of that document is of all the things that could go wrong, here's what's going to happen and if you want to get out of it, here's the way we're going to do it. It's allocation of risk and it has a bunch of obligations that we have to have to have to do kind of or else. Right. Um, and there would be a risk to the business if that stuff isn't done. A best risk management function would be aware of those things and if there's a likelihood that the management of those things is going sideways, that it kind of gets in gear and mitigates the risk. Um, likewise, if I'm a risk manager and there's all these things that could kind of go wrong and I might, suppliers might have something to do with protecting us. It would be nice, real nice if there's an obligation ideally in the contract, but if not at least adopted by and managed through by SRMs and contract managers that ties to the risk. Here's a new thing that we want you to do because we have a great relationship and we can talk into doing it and um, maybe you'll be assured of future business if you do it and risk and contract together are working together. Right. So, so I have a risk that I want someone to take, an obligation to mitigate. I have a contract and if this stuff goes wrong, that's a business risk I want someone to worry about. And these would be ways that data could be shared. It's eminently relevant to keep taking it forward a little bit here. When you have to report out that you have a risk register, uh, of these things, you have contractual controls, you have regular reviews by the srm. You can evidence all that in a digitally fit to audit way to in inside the business or fourth line auditor, you have factual bases to, to talk about the historical and current performance of your supplier. Ultimately, whether you're coming at this from, you know, these different roles. I haven't even mentioned ESG or innovation or anything like that yet. You're going to want the facts, you're going to want the historical record. What obligations have been taken and how are they going? How's the performance been going? And you're going to want to get to a not emotional but a fact based basis for uh, where, where you are today and what you're going to do with them in the future. And we see, we, we want it to be and we see that those that, that love and go for transparency get rewarded for it and those that, that, that don't want, don't, don't want it have, don't so much. Right. What, what's the argument against transparency? Um, what's a defensible argument against it? So we, we think that whether you're in these different functions or not, you should be well connected to those other functions. And it has to be so easy. It just has to be so easy. It can't be more homework that anyone has to do.

Speaker A: It sounds to me like you've just described what good digitally enabled supplier management looks like.

Speaker B: Well, um, well I guess I've been talking about the connection of everybody. We can't, we can't get out of the good until we talk about there's some method and reason to the madness and that, that we think of as policy. Right. So let's say I'm a chief procurement officer, uh, uh, and I say as a matter of policy I want my, I want to segment my supply chain. Everyone says that. Right. I need to and, and there's some, some in some industries reporting obligations on that top segment or two. So we're going to put this much resource into governing and keeping resilience. The uh, really critical things and much less resource in the rest. Be nice to automate a lot of that. So how are you going to do it? You don't want it just to be up to everyone's common sense even if they are connected and have transparent data you want to apply, you want to say this is how we do it and not so good. Looks like this is written down in a PDF document. The PDF document is stored on SharePoint. Everyone's supposed to read it, everyone's supposed to apply it and you better because I'm going to be checking on you. That's not so good. Um, very common but good. Looks like digitally boom. Like that's what you want. Fan that out and that should land on the suppliers, right? And the contracts and the services maybe like what you want to do, how you want to govern to assure all the things we talked about today so far. Value for money, op resilience once in a while an innovation pursuit. How do I know that it's even expected. Right. Well, it's in policy and it should be readily apparent. And every and then activities that, that, that fulfill or don't fulfill these things are, you know, audited without prep.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: That's what good digitally enabled supplier management looks like, in our opinion.

Speaker A: Yeah. And in reality there, as we know, there's going to be lots of layers in between the not so good and the what good looks like. So we'll know that there's, there's going to be like procurement leaders out there that uh, are somewhere along that journey they're going to be somewhere and they may be thinking about evaluating supplier management solutions like yourselves. So with that in mind, what, what would you recommend they consider and they think about as they're going through that evaluation process?

Speaker B: Well, I would say, boy, a couple things. First, do you have a roadmap? And if you don't close, don't tell anyone that. Close the door. Make your roadmap of what the org's going to do and how what you're doing is connected to the business roadmap. And with that you may have a vision, but the vision ought to be painted in the shape of a roadmap going out some three years or something. Uh, and then you know, you've got various aspirations covered and some orderly approach. So, so we would say do something that's a bit future proof for yourself. You know, if you're, if you're focused on the challenge in the next 10ft of your roadmap, you might solve that challenge and then you might next year be taking complaints about living in yet another silo. Right. We think taking a holistic future proofed um approach is key. But don't misunderstand me, like sometimes we find that procurement is rarely, it's not, it's rarely the, the season for a completely blow everything up transformation exercise. By blow everything up, I mean not so dramatic, but reassess our processes, improve them, re baseline everything that that is. There's always an argument to do that, but there's always some history of we just did that and now's not the right time to do that again. You don't have to do that, but you do have to have a roadmap and you do have to take a holistic approach. For what I'm investing in today is going to cover me for this next most important thing. But we'll, we'll uh, as we get into other aspects of the grand challenge, there will be, there will be capability, right? Minimum integration capability, but maybe some native Capability too. Um, and the second thing I would say, if you're going to, you said, you said evaluate solutions. Well, uh, it should be tied to the business objectives we want to achieve and how we're going to measure it all. That sounds reasonable, but a lot of people if you ask, well, do you want AI in there? Yeah. To do what? I don't know, but it better be in there. That's what I know. Well, that's not a business objective. What do you want to do with it? Um, it's good to think that through even if you don't know everything about what you need. Right. So uh, we think a road map, a semblance of some capabilities to fulfill the places where you want to be in the roadmap and a holistic approach really. That's how we think about basic.

Speaker A: Nice, nice. So that sounds like it's a three step action plan then for our listeners.

Speaker B: I think so.

Speaker A: Okay, well just as we're wrapping up then, Jesse, um, where can our guests connect with you? Where can they go to find a bit more about you and what Brooklyn does?

Speaker B: Well that's nice of you. Um, look, just find me on LinkedIn, right Jesse Lee Brooklyn. And then I'm uh, I live in there so we'll, we'll uh, connect that way. That'd be a great way to do it and find uh, the, the business go on LinkedIn and please follow us and you'll quickly click away from the website and see what's cooking. So that's how to find me. And anyone listening, please do love to hear what you think of all this. And, and um, we only get better by trading our ideas and building a community of practice, right Jothi? I mean it's the community and the best practice and anyone talking about solutions better, better be trying to fold in the best practices which people like you are bringing forward and sharing here.

Speaker A: Well, thank you Jesse. Yeah, and absolutely, yeah, I completely agree with you. And um, you've been a stalwart of an active campaigner to, to do the right thing with supplier, uh, management and, and, and your solution. So, and it's been great to, it's been great to have this conversation and it's been great to, to think, to look back on some of the experiences and some of the uh, the insights that I've been privileged to share with you because I've worked with you um, a couple of times. So thank you Jesse, thank you for, for sharing more about your background and um, about the company's background. And thank you very much. To everybody for listening. Thank you, Jesse.

Speaker B: Oh, you're so nice for saying that, Jyoti. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode of ProcureTech Insider. If you found this conversation valuable, you can subscribe to our ProcureTech specific newsletter, the Stack. Every Thursday, you'll get intelligence on procuretech companies, market developments, and, um, insights from practitioners delivered right to your inbox. To subscribe, go to artofprocurement.com subscribe. That's artofprocurement.com Subscribe.