How SiriusXM Hits All the Right Notes in Procurement

As North America’s leading audio entertainment company, SiriusXM offers listeners unparalleled access to music, sports, talk, news, comedy, podcasts and exclusive programming across satellite, streaming and in-car platforms. Alongside this impressive tech, SiriusXM is navigating a significant transformation, marked by rapid evolution in technologies, partnerships and platforms. Trasha Collins-Reed, the company’s Senior Director of Strategic Sourcing for the Product and Technology, leads the strategic sourcing efforts for the company’s products, technology, and enterprise IT area, focused on driving commercial value, building resilience, fostering supplier partnerships and aligning contracts and category strategies with the company’s broader business and technology vision. Trasha is dedicated to transforming sourcing from a transactional role into one of strategic enablement, aiming to create a culture of partnership, transparency and innovation at every organisational level. 

With a rich background in global supply chain and procurement leadership, Trasha has built her career across multiple industries, including notable roles at Google and Coca-Cola. She says her work “has always centred on connecting business goals with supplier capabilities” to strengthen both company performance and trust in partnerships. Trasha notes that SiriusXM is often seen as “more of a media tech company,” continuously expanding into personalised digital experiences that combine live content, on-demand access and innovative technology to engage audiences wherever they are. The company’s mission is “to deliver best in audio entertainment anywhere, anytime through unique curated content and powerful technology.” She explains SiriusXM aims to connect listeners with “voices, stories and sounds they love” while innovating delivery by investing in next-generation platforms, deepening partnerships and creating products that make listening effortless and personal.

Strategic procurement in action

Trasha describes SiriusXM’s sourcing and procurement transformation journey as one rooted in “clarity of purpose,” with a deliberate focus on designing procurement to act as “a strategic enabler” rather than a purely administrative function. Central to this was restructuring the team from a simple contract-focused model to one based on category management. Trasha explains: “This allowed us to focus on strategic sourcing and flawless contract execution.”

The shift enabled the creation of new operational systems, including “new operating rhythms, new workflows,” and the introduction of “executive summary reporting for our executive leadership,” providing them with “proper visibility into everything” the sourcing procurement function handles. SiriusXM’s success stems from a balance between human creativity and technological innovation. Trasha explains the company thrives because it maintains “the authenticity of [its] content” through trusted personalities and storytellers while evolving the delivery model. This success is supported by disciplined execution and strategic partnerships that enable agility, efficiency and skill, allowing SiriusXM to sustain growth amid a rapidly changing industry landscape.

Procurement powered by data insight

SiriusXM’s strategic procurement overhaul also depended heavily on agility and data visibility as the foundation for decision-making. Trasha says “the ability to be agile and have data visibility are, for us, now the foundation of every decision that we make.” Leveraging advanced data analytics, the procurement team can now identify critical opportunities such as “cost avoidance,” value creation that results in hard savings and risk identification “before it materialises”. 

Agility is more than just rapid execution, instead companies must focus on having the structure and insight to “adapt in real time to the ever-changing, ever evolving, ever pivoting business needs”. This mindset fosters an environment where decisions are evidence-based yet informed by the human context behind the data. One of the major cultural challenges in this transformation was overcoming legacy perceptions within the organisation. Trasha points out that the biggest barrier was “shifting the perception of sourcing from a control function to a value creation partner.”

SiriusXM tackled this by promoting transparency and “consistent communication” with internal business partners. They established “joint success metrics” that reflect mutual accountability, recognising that both procurement and business stakeholders “have skin in the game”. Business partners rely on sourcing to efficiently deliver value, while procurement depends on them to innovate and enhance current platforms. By demonstrating that sourcing could “help accelerate those outcomes versus slowing them down,” the procurement team built significant trust and credibility across the enterprise, which Trasha describes as essential to their success. The human side of transformation remains a priority for Trasha, who approaches it with empathy and collaboration. Her philosophy is that all parties – business teams, product teams, engineering teams and sourcing – are collaborators “driving value for the business and meeting milestones”. She says recognising that everyone faces individual challenges enables the team to find “a common goal” and fosters “more insight into what it is that they’re working on and what they’re facing”. This approach helps identify risks or new opportunities early, preventing missteps and enabling smoother project execution.

Aligning partnerships for growth

In today’s interconnected business landscape, success increasingly depends on the strength of corporate partnerships and the ability to collaborate across functions with shared purpose and trust. Trasha highlights the unique consulting and partnership nature of her role, saying: “I don’t own the wallet; I am not the technical expert; I don’t design; I rarely have ever utilised the actual tools that I source.” Since she is neither the end user nor the budget owner, her function is to act as “a consultant and support and collaborator” who helps deliver on the goals of business partners. This perspective builds trust and positions her as a value-adding ally rather than a gatekeeper, fostering strong partnerships in a complex and evolving technological environment. Supporting this transformation, SiriusXM developed partnerships with state of the art sourcing tools to help it tackle long-standing procurement hurdles. These tools, such as spend analytics and pipeline management, catalysed a company-wide change, helping to modernize workflows and approvals, which helped SiriusXM bring Sourcing to the business partner level. The integration of multiple platforms and tools catalysed a company wide change, modernising workflows, vendors and technology stacks, which helped SiriusXM overcome growing pains tied to rapid expansion and regulatory challenges like privacy laws. SiriusXM’s strategic partnerships also extend to AI and technology firms to accelerate transformation in self-service and customer engagement systems.

This progress is underpinned by the trust, alignment and governance SiriusXM has established with its strategic partners, strengthening the connection between technology innovation and customer experience. Trasha highlights how these partnerships “exemplify disciplined supplier engagement and value-based contracting”. Not only that, it “helped [the SiriusXM team] to prioritise partners who share [its] values and ensure every technology investment, including AI, delivers measurable efficiency and long-term strategic benefit.” She sees this approach as central to structuring AI technology investments for scalability, strategic benefit and ROI – supporting SiriusXM’sbroader commitment to responsibly adopting emerging technologies that make operations smarter and listening experiences more intuitive.

Integrating conversational AI solutions as part of SiriusXM’s broader technology roadmap supports trust, alignment and governance, Trasha says. Collaboration has driven measurable efficiency and “a stronger connection between technology and innovation and customer experience,” with a focus on the customer journey itself. From sourcing’s viewpoint, these partnerships illustrate how “strategic alignment and proactive governance create resilience, innovation and measurable business value,” while optimising speed to market alongside cost discipline and risk transparency. Specifically, SiriusXM’s partnerships with select AI and technology providers have been instrumental in enhancing the customer journey and direct strategy. By leveraging conversational AI capabilities, SiriusXM improves service speed, personalisation and consistency across channels.

A continuous journey

For procurement leaders driving transformation, Trasha’s advice is to “start with purpose and people”. She stresses that transformation is not just about tools or organisational structures, but about “creating clarity and empowerment and accountability”. Leaders should build “a strong foundation of trust and data, communicate relentlessly and celebrate progress continuously. Most importantly, she reminds her fellow procurement professionals that “transformation is never finished,” framing it as “a continuous journey of learning, evolving and leading within intent”. Looking ahead, Trasha’s vision for sourcing and procurement at SiriusXM is to become “a predictive insight-driven function that shapes strategy for the Product & Tech and enterprise IT categories”. She aspires for procurement to have “a direct seat at the table” – not just reacting but proactively making recommendations to achieve milestones within the company’s roadmap. Instead of merely managing spend or securing cost savings, she sees sourcing and procurement driving “transformation and innovation across every category” by integrating data, technology and human intelligence to deliver continuous improvement. Emerging technologies such as AI, predictive analytics and digital workflow automation are expected to accelerate this future. Trasha believes these tools enable strategic sourcing to anticipate business needs, “identify risk much quicker” and unlock deeper supplier performance insights. In this evolving role, sourcing and procurement will be vital in guiding investments, shaping partnerships and enabling faster innovation cycles. The future for sourcing and procurement at SiriusXM, she says, is “about intelligence and integration.”