Sue Spence – transforming sourcing and procurement at FedEx

Brutally honest. That’s a phrase that springs to mind when talking procurement transformation with Sue Spence – Vice President, Global Sourcing & Procurement at FedEx Corporation.

Drafted in by the shipping and transportation giant a little over nine years ago to build a centralised sourcing and procurement operation from scratch, straight-talking Spence wasted little time in making a big impression.

“One of my favourite phrases is ‘begin with the end in mind’,” she says. “My approach to designing the future state of sourcing and procurement at FedEx was to first define what world-class looked like for our function. We came up with seven characteristics of a best-in-class organisation and then gave ourselves a brutally honest assessment (red, yellow, green) on how close or far apart we were from those characteristics. There was a whole lot of red back in 2013, but by 2018, it was a whole lot of green.”