GEP Europe Tour 2025, London: Q&A with Franck Capron

The GEP Europe Tour 2025 carried on the momentum on its second stop in London, with leaders in procurement and supply chain joined to examine the groundbreaking advancements in AI-driven solutions.

Guests who attended the tour at the St. Ermin's Hotel in London were making connections, while also seeing knowledgeable keynotes exploring the evolution of digital and operating models, the transformation of digital payments and the future of procurement. 

An exciting Procurement Leaders Panel featured executives from Costa Coffee, Swiss Re and Nationwide Building Society.

During the evening, Procurement Magazine caught up with leaders from GEP to discuss their hopes for the tour. 

One of those was Franck Capron, Senior Director at GEP, who stressed the importance of an event like this

Tell us a bit about you and your role with GEP

I’m Frank Karon. I'm a senior director for GEP. I've been in the company for a bit more than 12 years now. I'm based out of Prague, Czech Republic. I'm also the delivery centre lead there. My role in GEP, I'm taking care of some of our regional and global clients, mostly under source to pay elements, so managing a large team with three different types of procurement programmes. I also have a background in supply chain and logistics.

Could you give us a quick introduction to the GEP Europe tour? 

The GEP Europe Tour is something that we started four years ago. We started quite small and now this year I think we are going to 11 different cities across Europe. This is a very nice event when we focus on networking, but also bringing trends back to the business, meeting with professionals, sharing insight. That's really what it is all about.

GEP is growing at an impressive pace. Why is it so important to bring industry professionals together in an environment like this?

So keep in mind that the environment is changing quite fast. So I think a lot of people want to try to understand what's outside of their four walls and I think there is a need on the market just to network to talk about procurement among procurement professionals. We have conferences, but this is a more engaging event, when actually we can exchange with the crowd. I think a lot of people find good interest in actually getting on those events and networking. And we actually see the demand growing, as I said is our fourth year and we have more registration and people are aware of it.

What does GEP hope to achieve from today's event and the rest of the Europe tour?

It's good for our reputation, making sure that we stay connected within the procurement business. But it's not just that, it's also very important for us to engage with people. So we are bringing clients and companies with whom we have connections, but we are also bringing new people or people that don't have any relationship with us. It's very interesting and very important to stay connected with them, to also hear where their priorities are, what challenges they are facing because it's evolving, it's changing.

This is also how we drive and adapt as well, our proposal and our solution. So this is a bit of a win-win event. I think it's good for them because they learn something from us, but it's also good for us because we learn something from them.

Why should companies join GP in the era of enterprise AI?

It's a big world and things are changing and there are a lot of fears and expectations when it comes to Gen AI and AI. But the reality is, that’s where the market and the business is heading. So you can accept it, you can reject it, but that's not going to change the fact that it's part of the business.

If you want to stay best in class, if you want to stay competitive, if you want to keep delivering the best value for your customers, you need to start thinking about how AI is going to play a big role in your day-to-day life. But as well, strategic procurement practices. You need to think a bit out of the box and these events showing the art of possible, I think it's quite critical for companies.

Remaining tour dates

• Munich, 11 February 2025
• Zurich, 25 February 2025
• Paris, 5 March 2025
• Geneva, 6 March 2025
• Copenhagen, 11 March 2025
• Stockholm, 12 March 2025
• Helsinki, 13 March 2025
• Lisbon, 19 March 2025
• Madrid, 20 March 2025

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