P&SC LIVE Q&A: SAP's Chief Revenue Officer, Jeff Collier

Jeff Collier, Chief Revenue Officer for SAP's Intelligent Spend and Business Network Division, is focused on solutions for supplier management, procurement, sourcing, contingent workforce, travel and expense - and supply networks.

He is responsible for ensuring customer and partner success, delivering on global revenue targets, defining go-to-market strategy and influencing product strategy.

Jeff also served on the board for GreenToken, a start-up venture offering a multi-commodity supply chain platform for tracing commingled raw materials.

Closing Procurement and Supply Chain LIVE, London, 2024, his fireside chat explored the pressing challenges facing modern supply chains and procurement functions.

Jeff shared insights into the strategies organisations are deploying to mitigate disruptions, with a focus on the growing role of AI in procurement and supply chain operations.

After finishing on stage, Procurement Magazine caught up with Jeff.

What inspired you to get involved in the procurement and supply chain space and how has your perspective on this evolved over time?

It's actually been quite a bit of time, it's almost 25 years now. I was a software developer focused on computer engineering and I joined a little company called Ariba in the year 2000 as a developer. I saw the power that the network could have connecting to suppliers, and it was a technology solution for a real business problem. 

I never left the space with Ariba, with SAP and now with the combined companies, I still see the business challenges today, especially in supply chain.

Are there any innovations or trends in procurement and supply chain that you're particularly excited about?

There are a number and it probably wouldn't be a fair answer without talking about artificial intelligence, but it's really true. I've talked with some of the people here at this event about what's right here in front of us.

The supply chain I shared with the group started with complex maths, with linear algebra, with optimisation routines, and it's evolved right up to where AI can help today.

Taking costs out of the business, doing some of the manual work, like writing descriptions, creating catalogues for suppliers, finding the optimal routes still today. And it's just going to go from there.

What's been your biggest takeaway or highlight from the event?

My highlight for sure was the awards, it is always a privilege to be able to hand awards to teams. It's when you go out on a project, you put a lot of focus in, you take risks and it takes time.

Sometimes the celebration isn't for a couple years later and so you need to celebrate along the way. That's where the awards make all the difference in the world.

How do you see events like Procurement and Supply Chain LIVE contributing to the broader industry movement?

SAP is my company. It's a large technology company, but we just don't have nearly enough people. No technology company has enough people to solve all of the problems. So you need customers, organisations need technology, companies working together and an ecosystem fashion.

I've found small companies at events like this that help with identifying new sources of supply using AI, crawling the web to find the data that's there. These events play a really key role in connecting large and small technology companies to solve problems.

How do you anticipate procurement and supply chain practises within your organisation to evolve in the next five years or so?

SAP is overweighting a lot of our focus on this space, procurement solutions, supply chain solutions and everything that fits in between with suppliers is one of our largest focus areas because of how much that can be done.

Because there's a huge business case and because of the sustainability focus as SAP is a European headquartered company with a real focus on making the world better legitimately through software and sustainability is an area where most companies talk.

Most companies have intentions, but not yet the technology needed to be able to ultimately calculate what are the carbon impacts. You have to know first to take action.

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