Liberty Global: Delivering Customer-Centric Procurement
Martin Simper is a man never keen on being in his comfort zone. As Chief Procurement Officer at Liberty Procurement Services, part of Liberty Global, he has overseen a dramatic transformation of procurement from an internal department to a customer-facing service provider. It has been a significant challenge in terms of technology, process and culture, but one that is already demonstrating great success.
Martin’s story in procurement begins after deciding a university maths degree in the UK wasn’t for him and going against the advice of the Dean of Mathematics at his university.
“It was quite a difficult conversation to have,” says Martin. “I was still not very worldly and he said he said my career would amount to nothing without a degree. Those were his exact words to me. I got up, shook his hand and said ‘thank you’. It just made me more determined to be a success”
On reflection, Martin knew he could no longer learn in a classroom or lecture theatre and wanted to branch out to a new environment – stepping out of that comfort zone.
He found himself at the mail-order publisher, Grolier, where he moved through departments before stepping into purchasing. Every procurement executive can pinpoint the moment they knew they had found their niche in business. Martin’s arrived when his desk phone rang and he discovered it was his CEO on the line.
He recalls: “I popped into his big spatial office and he said, ‘congratulations, you're now running all of our procurement. You're going to purchase all of our books, you're going to run our supply chain, you're going to manage all of our printed literature’. I think I was probably about 20 years of age.”
Martin had been at Grolier for less than three years and was already making a huge leap of faith up the career ladder.
Building experience and expertise
His career took him to what was then Europe’s biggest printing company in the form of Polestar, before stints at Norwich Union, Vodafone and Virgin Media – where he took a step backwards in seniority to help with a long-term ambition.
“I actually joined as an analyst,” says Martin. “I went down two levels to join, mainly because I really missed that environment of being in a blue chip with a buzz and being part of what feels like a family.”
It was not a step back that lasted long.
“The best advice I was ever given was don't do a job for money,” he adds. “Do a job because of the opportunity and the challenge. Within seven years I became the Chief Procurement Officer.”
After three years in Belgium at Telenet as Vice President of Procurement, he returned home to the UK to take on his current challenge at Liberty Global in London.
It has been a career journey of perpetual motion for Martin and he has been powered by his willingness to push himself professionally.
He continues: “If you can do your job with your eyes closed or your hands tied behind your back and you don't have that feeling of ‘what's going on today?’, that's not for me. I think it's nice to feel out of your comfort zone. It becomes natural and that feeling is what draws me to want to do different things.”
Building a business within Liberty Global
Liberty Global is a leading multinational telecommunications company and has been a prominent player in the telecom and media industry since its formation in 2005 through the merger of Liberty Media International and UnitedGlobalCom.
The business operates primarily in Europe, providing television, broadband and telephony services across countries including the UK, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland and Poland.
Consumers best know the company through brands including Virgin Media O2 in the UK, Sunrise in Switzerland, VodafoneZiggo in the Netherlands and Telenet in Belgium. It has expanded its reach through various strategic acquisitions and investments, making it one of the largest international TV and broadband providers.
When Martin arrived at Liberty Global, he was met with what he describes as a partially-centralised procurement organisation. His outlook on how the operation was performing is pragmatic, as some areas were delivering better outcomes than others. This left the procurement operation at a crossroads. Martin set about answering the question of what the strategic importance of procurement was to Liberty Global moving forwards and it was clear that either all of procurement should be passed back to the different operating companies under the Liberty Global banner or they needed to look to do something completely different within Liberty Global.
Shifting culture
“It was very much, we could just call it a day and put it back into the different operating companies and divest it completely, or we could try and create a business,” Martin says.
This is where Liberty Procurement Services was born. The operational and cultural shift was to develop a customer-centric organisation to replace an internal business function.
This step has seen the development of other in-house services, such as Liberty Shared Services and Liberty Speciality Services. These different verticals now closely collaborate and support each other to provide an even stronger offering to customers, under the Liberty Financial Services umbrella.
Martin is humble enough to admit that, at the beginning of the process, there was scepticism and ‘raised eyebrows’ about the project and the impact it could have. He welcomed the challenge and knew a laser focus on customer-centricity would help win over any doubters.
This required a fundamental change in culture and approach to customer service.
“When my team walks through your door, they're going to put their customer cap on,” explains Martin. “They may get paid by Liberty Global, but actually all they're going to think about is you as a customer.”
This significant change in mindset had to run like a watermark through the service – and customers are benefitting from the continuity.
“We went through a restructure where we took what was predominantly an internal-focused procurement function and we turned it into a customer-focused procurement team focusing purely on sourcing,” he says.
This approach also included taking category management specialists and putting them into one team, so as to act as consultants as you would see in a managed service. Meanwhile, a delivery function divided by customer means they get to work with the same groups of experts regularly, with the two disciplines working together in tandem.
This is pulled together by an account director, who can focus on the performance of an account.
“Their job is to focus on the account, the profitability of the account, how the account works, the happiness of the customer and really focus on that lens,” he says. “We've not had that before, so that's pushed it on even further.”
A customer-centric approach
The customer-centric mentality also brings opportunities to improve Liberty’s offering. By listening to customers and establishing exactly where their pain-points exist, the firm is able to provide better solutions.
“All of the things that we've worked on in recent times around orchestration, around risk, around ESG, around training and upskilling people, have all come from conversations with our customers,” says Martin. ”It is starting to shape our business.”
Now Martin has the team running as an outward-facing business, it has developed a suite of products to help optimise its offering.
Liberty Global has assembled Source Risk, Source Hub, Source Academy and Source Insights to develop the customer experience and react in real time to the demands of its partners.
“One of the first things that happen when you're talking to a customer is they throw you a load of data,” he explains. “What you need to be able to do as a business is turn that data around in a quick fashion to be able to show the areas where we think we can help them.”
“This is where we play today. This is the experience we have. That is the conversation you want to be having, with an ability to digest data and pull something that's quick within 24-48 hours as a spend cube.”
Here, Martin highlights the work he has done alongside Mithra-Ai, which allows them to develop spend cubes quickly and efficiently.
“We had an example of doing that for one of our customers,” he says. “Almost overnight we gave them a load of ERP data, they created the taxonomy and they gave us a spend cube.
Martin feels these dashboards – which give procurement teams full customer spend visibility – offer a great advantage, helping to move away from legacy spreadsheets and providing real-time insights and intelligence.
He continues: “I can sit there with my phone when I'm with a customer and tell them ‘we're saving you X, we think the spend is Y, these are your top 10 suppliers, and these are the next contracts which you've got coming up that we'll need to work on’.”
The core offering is Source Hub, which allows customers to interact with the four primary procurement services on offer. This can be project-based procurement, using scale contracts, owning a category from end-to-end or a full outsourcing offering.
This works alongside the training tool, Source Academy, as well as Source Risk, which allows procurement teams to work with real-time information on potential risks and challenges from suppliers.
Forging strong partnerships
A strong team of partners was essential to bring together the offering of Liberty Procurement Services. This in itself needed to be a mix of both internal and external collaborations.
Internally, Martin says he is lucky to have the expertise of Liberty Shared Services, which has powered the technical infrastructure needed to realise the transformation of the procurement function.
“They've done an amazing job on transformation and implementing these things quickly,” says Martin, who recognises that the technology is allowing the procurement team to increase efficiencies and support the growth of the business.
He also highlights the work of Stuart Rogers in the Development Team, who opened Martin’s eyes to the need to transform things with better technology.
“He convinced me through great leadership, really knowing his stuff, really doing his homework and coming to me with a view on where to invest our money and the reasons why,” Martin explains. “He did it with a huge amount of passion and enthusiasm and convinced me it was the right thing to do – and the benefits it would bring.”
Martin champions the power of co-creation and collaboration in partnerships and recognises how important it is to get those relationships right.
He mentions Fujikura, with which Liberty Global works on materials for its HFC networks in the fibre space. This complements the engineering team in the businesses, re-working products to bring efficiency to the cost base.
There are other qualities he values, such as the ingenuity and imagination of a company like Sercomm which is a trusted CPE vendor. Martin says the business is constantly challenging Liberty Global to explore new avenues and do things differently.
As a company expanding its fibre networks, the reliability of partners is also crucial. Martin uses fibre manufacturer HFCL as an example and emphasises how critical it is for the procurement partner to have a reliable and robust supply chain to expand the business.
Other partners help Liberty Global improve the margins of sustainability performance, such as Sagemcom. Martin credits the business for its dedication to bringing energy-efficient products into the network from a CPE perspective.
Experience in procurement
Martin shows a genuine passion for his profession and is quick to define what he classes as a successful day. It’s far more than simply closing a deal or implementing a new strategy.
“A good day will mean I've been able to actually inspire people myself,” says Martin. “I love mentoring. Leadership is massive in any organisation. I try to surround myself with people that are like-minded. With that human belief, you can come to work and be yourself; you can have your say in an open environment.”
Over a 30-year career, Martin has seen a great many changes in the art of procurement, but there are underlying skills that are essential for any professional wanting to be successful in the field.
“Ultimately, procurement is a people business,” he goes on. “So if you like people, then that is the right business to be in.”
“I think if your customer feels that you are listening to them, you're reacting and you're providing them with solutions in a procurement landscape, you'll always do pretty well.”
This prompts Martin to reflect on a chance meeting he had with the Dean of Mathematics who gave him a dim view of his career prospects years earlier.
“I remember seeing him in our local supermarket about 15 years later,” he recalls. “I was in there with my daughter holding my hand as we walked down the aisle. “I smiled and winked at him and he smiled and nodded, knowing that I'd done okay. I’d just got to that point where I wanted to get out and work and see what the world was about. I like to think I was brave enough to do something about it and make a decision.”
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