Episode 1: How Ai and Data-Driven Procurement is Shaping Public Health with Travis Crouch

Sian Lloyd – 00:00:02:

Hello and welcome to Powering Procurement, a podcast by Atamis, where we unpack the world of procurement and supply chain management with the help of leading experts. I’m your host, Sian Lloyd, and this is the Atamis resident expert, Gareth Burch.

Gareth Burch – 00:00:18:

With nearly 20 years of experience in procurement, I may be billed as the expert, but believe me, I’m here to learn too.

Sian Lloyd – 00:00:25:

Each episode with our expert guests will see us diving into the world of procurement, understanding the opportunities and challenges facing the sector.

Gareth Burch – 00:00:34:

And we’ll explore easy wins and longer term strategies to help you rise to the challenge of driving value through your work while showing the power of procurement.

Sian Lloyd – 00:00:45:

So let’s get started. Welcome to Powering Procurement. Our guest today is Travis Crouch, Head of Commercial Systems and Intelligence at the UK Department of Health and Social Care, DHSC. In his role, Travis leads the transformation of procurement processes across DHSC and the NHS, leveraging advanced technologies and data-driven strategies to achieve better commercial outcomes in the public health sector. He’s also an associate commercial specialist for the government commercial function, where he draws on his expertise to enhance government-wide procurement capabilities.

Gareth Burch – 00:01:25:

Travis brings a wealth of experience from both public and private sectors, having previously served as procurement technology and data leader at Aviva, independent of commercial data and technology at NHS Digital. His career also includes significant roles at DEFRA, where he managed procurement systems and data. With extensive experience in e-procurement, strategic sourcing, and supplier relationship management, Travis is a leading voice in driving innovation and excellence in procurement through technology and data analytics.

Sian Lloyd – 00:01:54:

Welcome to you, Travis. Great to see you today. Thanks so much for joining us. I’d just like to begin by setting the scene and a little bit of context. If you could give us an overview of your procurement function.

Travis Crouch – 00:02:07:

I currently, as Gareth said, work at the Department of Health and Social Care. I head up the commercial systems and intelligence team. So we look after all the technology that’s required to deliver commercial services to DHSE. And DHSE, in terms of what they look after and what they buy, is more around like your DDAX. So this is around software, hardware licenses, laptops, those sorts of things. But it’s a bit of a mixed bag. There’s also a lot of professional services, sort of contingent labor, legal services, consultancy. And then also corporate and clinical. It’s a real mix. So that covers stuff like facilities management, screening, public health services, et cetera. A bit of a mix, but then that’s just DHSE. So our implementation of Atamis kind of stretches out to the wider health sector. This is covering off DHSE, its arm’s length bodies, NHS trusts and foundation trusts. We’ve managed to roll out the system to 94% of health, which is, I think it was around 318 organizations and we’ve stretched the kind of full spectrum of all services and that’s the kind of system that we need to look after and maintain.

Sian Lloyd – 00:03:14:

So how would you describe the way that the systems support the teams there?

Travis Crouch – 00:03:19:

We have to ensure that the system is set up in a compliant way, first of all, but then also is set up in a way to help automate and direct people through the process to ensure that the public is getting value for money in its procurements and also that suppliers are able to automate some of their parts of the process when they’re responding to bids. And then also in a way that we can collect data across the spectrum of the source-to-pay, source-to-contract in particular process. And by doing that, we’ll look at aggregating information and producing reports to help us make those strategic decisions. So that covers off the broad spectrum at a really high level there. And the other thing, too, is around making sure all change management that goes through the system is done in a coordinated and safe way. Make sure we’ve got all our testing done. Make sure all the communications are done, all the changes, and ensure that all of the buyers are aware of the changes that are coming up across the whole of the health system.

Sian Lloyd – 00:04:22:

Gareth, you’ve been collaborating with Travis, haven’t you? Any observations at this stage and a bit about that collaboration, really?

Gareth Burch – 00:04:30:

Yes, so working with Travis has been a genuinely great experience. Understanding his challenges, how solution, technology, and data support them is a massive undertaking. And some of the challenges from technology to process to people and how DHSC are working with NHS England and the different trusts Travis outlined to deliver a single solution with a single view where we share and elevate data. It’s such an impressive journey and great to hear and see what Travis and the team are doing.

Sian Lloyd – 00:05:02:

Travis, you’ve got a really impressive CV. Just one thing I’m interested to ask at this stage, really, has there been any defining moment or perhaps an experience along the way that’s helped shape your procurement journey?

Travis Crouch – 00:05:15:

I think just really simply having worked at many different organizations, different procurement teams, and understanding how each of those organizations operate to their values has been instrumental in me when I’m moving to a different role or different organization to actually bring those learnings along the journey with me. I think if I had to say there was one thing around the linkage between them all is the people and the network. That has been really important to me and has really helped shape my career and also things that will help me and my team go and make sure to deliver to our best ability.

Gareth Burch – 00:05:51:

Really interesting. As a leader for guiding significant procurement transformation, what are the core principles or philosophies which have helped guide you, especially when leading complex change?

Travis Crouch – 00:06:03:

It’s really important to have a good team. Something you can’t do is do this on your own. You have to have a good team and you have to trust your team. Giving your team some really good objectives, make sure everyone understands what they are responsible for delivering, and then also making sure they’ve got the support they need to ensure that delivery is successful. That’s the core of it.

Sian Lloyd – 00:06:23:

That’s great to hear a bit about you, Travis, and your background as well. We feel we’re getting to know you a little bit in this podcast. Moving on to a bit about the work that you’ve been doing there at DHRC. And I know it really involves driving digital transformation using platforms like Atamis. What would you say your goals are there? Is it around efficiency or are you looking for something else as well, strategic procurement outcomes, perhaps?

Travis Crouch – 00:06:54:

Yeah, it’s all of the above, really. So I think we always ensure that we are compliant with procurement regulations. That is key. So within my team, we focus on ensuring that we have good workflows and templates available, which are compliant. But then at the same time, we ensure the system is configured in a way to get that aggregate data information to then look for value in kind of opportunity. So this is category management basics, but on a much larger scale and then also to identify risk in the supply chain, risk in kind of the full procurement landscape that’s owned.

Sian Lloyd – 00:07:30:

Something you identify with as well there, Gareth?

Gareth Burch – 00:07:33:

Absolutely. I think it’s very hard when you start looking at strategic procurement outcomes, how you maximize the efficiencies and the effectiveness of procurement to drive value, but how you bring people on the journey, especially with the induction of technology and data. Sometimes it doesn’t always go as you would like. And sometimes you do have detractors who don’t necessarily agree with the approach, but having those set strategies aligned to the business outcomes, it starts helping to elevate procurement in a positive way. One of the biggest things in my career, the struggle is the single view. And it’s one of the things for me, it’s really impressive to see what DHSC have done with the consolidation of all of those trusts, hospitals, et cetera, 94% of health into one system, getting them in a much better position for a single view. It’s fascinating and a significant undertaking.

Sian Lloyd – 00:08:28:

Wow, absolutely. I had no idea the extent of it, and that is what has happened in the area. Travis, how do you measure the success of that?

Travis Crouch – 00:08:39:

In terms of the success of the implementation, it was really simplistic. We set some really tough targets in terms of the delivery and we set a really good implementation team to help deliver that, led by Steve Balding, a good colleague. And that success there is around kind of adoption, making sure we’re keeping track of who’s onboarding, where they are on their journey, what do they need to do to get themselves ready. But then separately around kind of measure of success, there’s one key thing in commercial, which is savings, benefits, delivering value, how do we measure that? So ultimately we know that by implementing one solution, doing it once, managing one contract across the health system brings great benefits for kind of the whole health system, simply just because we have a central funding agreement for the contract, which is provided by Crown Commercial Service and this has meant that there’s no individual licenses to pay for any procurement solution within the wider health system. So lots of benefits there for which we’ve tracked against the program to ensure that we’re delivering good value through the program. And then also we will also try and measure success through some actual savings and stuff which have been released by using the platform. We’ve got a commercial pipeline in the system, circa 30,000 records, roughly up to worth 90 billion pounds worth of spend. And those opportunities are all trapped and logged in the system and they are pushed largely by our colleagues in NHS England, Nils van der Winkel and Richard Taylor, very helpful colleagues, and they’ve helped roll out that pipeline module. And through that, there have been opportunities that were identified as particular ICS in North-West London, who identified quite a large sum of savings, I think it was up to 30 million. I think it was the figure, I can’t remember off the top of my head, with the savings just through that aggregation of contracts and opportunities just by having the single system and we’re still at the early days, I’d say. We’ve only just closed our onboarding program in June. Now the focus is around adoption. Now we get the data quality up to a standard where we need it to be. So yeah, lots of ways to measure the success there.

Gareth Burch – 00:11:00:

You just touched on an example of where procurement has driven value through the collaboration and consolidation. What were the key lessons you’ve learned from that initiative?

Travis Crouch – 00:11:09:

It’s like you have to weigh up the pros and cons of your different approaches as to how you roll out a system like that. But within two years to reach 94% is mega impressive. Anyone who’s implemented a large scale system implementation to know that you’ve rolled out to so many organizations in such a short space of time is a huge success. However, our approach to do almost came at a cost of getting everyone in and on and using the system rather than focusing on improving data quality before it was onboarded. So I think one of our key lessons, and I don’t know whether it’s a lesson, but just to be aware of there needs to be a decision, a risk-based decision made to do you go fast, go quick, and then reduce your quality? Or do you go slower, longer, and get better quality? So that whole cost-time quality, they can only have F2. But yeah, I think for us, maybe a more balanced approach on that might have been more helpful. We have quite a few. Things to deal with in the system, duplicate suppliers, those sorts of things. But we have a strategy to work through those, and we’re on a trajectory to get those sorted.

Sian Lloyd – 00:12:18:

Thanks so much for your insight there. Really fascinating stuff already in this podcast. I’d like to focus a bit on data analytics now. And actually, Gareth, go to you as our resident expert. How important is that in terms of procurement strategy?

Gareth Burch – 00:12:35:

For me, data is king. Without sufficient data, without quality data, Germans face a massive uphill battle. What are the right areas we should be looking at to drive value? What are the areas which create risk and put the businesses unnecessarily in a position where risks turn to issues? Without data, we can’t predict, and we’re unable to see these issues and unable to proactively remedy these. Procurement has come a long way over the last 15, 20 years, and data is very much coming into the foresight. Data helps us massively. Data quality, as Travis has alluded to, does become a challenge with an implementation. But how you put the right controls in place help you and help your end users, the people who are using the system, who are on the ground doing the sourcing activities, contract or supplier management activities, and the risk mitigation. So that data helps us drive and the overarching procurement strategy. It forms our procurement strategies, our category strategies, and really allows us to get into the detail, in particularly high-pressing areas like risk management. Travis, I wonder if you agree with that statement?

Travis Crouch – 00:13:51:

Yeah, absolutely. You nailed it, that data is king. It’s incredibly important, and my team’s name is the Systems and Intelligence team, right? So we’ve got two strands and within my team alone, they just look at data and how we can use data to help influence commercial strategies. And then also just some of the core decisions that are made within a commercial team, setting up commercial teams. What size of a team do you need to manage a particular category? What’s the trend over time? Are we spending more or less with more suppliers, less suppliers? What do we need to do around SRM? All those things is so important, and having good data is essential to deliver that.

Gareth Burch – 00:14:32:

Prevent insights have significantly impacted your procurement strategy in a positive way.

Travis Crouch – 00:14:38:

Yeah, so it’s maybe not a specific example, because I don’t have the full details, but I know I’ve just recently had a conversation with NHS Business Services Authority. So not something DHSC are doing, but they’re using our implementation to help get information to help drive a program. So they’ve got their electronic staff record program, which is looking for similar systems that are out there and how they can interact with those health organizations to offer up what solution they have and how that program can support them. So that’s the kind of thing that we use and we use our system for. We’ve got what we call the data analytics app. Which is a kind of version of our implementation, but it’s watered down to anything that’s publicly available. And it’s all summarized in one lot through one login. And what that does is it gives people the opportunity to see all contracts that are in the solution, who the contracting authority is, what the value is, all that stuff you’d find on Contracts Finder or find a tender service. And then also see who the procurement person was to then reach out and have a discussion. It also shows the kind of pipeline and knowing where people are looking to buy stuff in future. So it gives people the opportunity to reach out and help drive those opportunities.

Gareth Burch – 00:15:59:

Within your role, what steps do you take to align stakeholders and how these insights drive action? Because you are in a very difficult place with multiple customers, but you have that single view, which is really interesting.

Travis Crouch – 00:16:15:

Yeah, what I find is that most people want to use data in their decision making. But however, a lot of people haven’t had good data to help make decisions. So they’ve gone back to instinct and they make instinct based on general gut feeling, which is not too far off generally from the truth as you find because someone will go, hang on, that doesn’t look right. And you slice it in a different way. You go, there we go. That’s what I was thinking. So people generally do have a good feel of things. But what my team are doing is trying to bring that information to life. And what we have to deal with is sometimes people are wrong and their opinions aren’t entirely right. And showing the data helps prove that. And when I say they’re wrong, it’s not something they’re far off. It’s not something criminal. It’s just simply a bit of help by looking at the data. And then it kind of helps them going forward. And I think in the future, it’ll be very difficult to make a decision without data just because of the way the world’s going. They’re using technologies. And I know we’ll get onto discussions of AI in a bit. But yeah, just keeping people aligned, making sure we’re using data for decisions.

Sian Lloyd – 00:17:21:

Well, perhaps before we delve too much into AI, I was just wondering whether there are any innovative data analytic practices that you think are going to be driving things forward in the future. I know we are going to talk about AI in a bit, but whether there’s anything else you want to touch on this stage, really?

Travis Crouch – 00:17:40:

So what we’re doing a lot at the moment, we can see where things are going. But what we’re trying to do is make sure we’re ready to do that. And our innovation can be quite simplistic at the moment, but it makes a huge difference. For instance, you’ve got the NHS operates on a category taxonomy called E-class that is used across the whole of the NHS. And then in central governments and arms length bodies, the HSE use something which the Crown Commercial Service created called the common areas of spend. Those are two different category taxonomies and the two kind of don’t align. So something we implemented last year in my team was a hybrid of those two. And what that enabled us to do is anything that’s in our system, no matter where it came from, we’re able to align them. So we can tell anything that’s professional services or clinical services or whatever, we can actually join it all together. So then we can see everything through one lens. It was not a small project, but it wasn’t massive either. But the benefits long term will be huge and we know they will be. We’re already seeing those benefits come through. But we know that just recently, there’s a lot of stuff in the press around the NHS being broken, but not something that can’t be fixed. The sorts of things that we’re trying to do will help that long term because we can’t look at it through one lens anymore. We have to look at it at a holistic scope.

Sian Lloyd – 00:19:07:

That’s really interesting. Thank you. Something you mentioned earlier, Travis, was around regulation and compliance. And I suppose that’s something that outsiders like me really see as something natural almost about the public sector. We know there’s regulation, we know there’s compliance. How have you managed to introduce innovative practices in procurement so far within that regulatory background?

Travis Crouch – 00:19:35:

Yes, it’s an interesting topic. I think for me and my team, as having stated previously, we look after central administration on behalf of the health system as well as having a lens on DHSE and their commercial team. So what we need to be careful of is when we’re creating templates and workflows which any organization could use across the health system, that they are aligned to best practice and that they follow standards that are set from cabinet office and also aligned with the regulatory environment we work in. We have to be quite careful in terms of how much innovation we build into those because they’re very kind of strict processes. However, though, where a commercial person takes a procurement through the process and if there’s any notices that need publishing on any of the notice systems like contracts by the finder tender, we have built in some innovation within the contracts module using flows, which basically is a Salesforce tech for kind of automation that will look to see what type of procurement it is, what procurement route it’s followed. And then it will tell you whether it needs a notice publishing and when the notice needs publishing by. And then using the dashboards and reporting technology within Atamis, we can then do dashboards based on time taken to publish and then also whether we’re hitting the targets or not, which is incredibly helpful for senior leaders and commercial teams to understand how well their teams are performing against those metrics. And we use kind of automation to pull dates in and populate fields in the system to try and help as much as we can. Ultimately, it’s those sorts of things that we can do to ensure we are being more compliant and try and help people through the process to make sure they know what steps they need to take. There’s a lot that needs to be done around getting people up to the standard that’s expected and I think transforming procurement will help with that.

Sian Lloyd – 00:21:37:

Gareth this Compliance a hot topic for you?

Gareth Burch – 00:21:40:

Compliance really is a hot topic. It’s not just the public sector, though. It spans across private now. So over the last recent years with geopolitical issues, there is definitely that need for a more robust and more, I wouldn’t go as far as regulated, but creating that structure within both public and private. Previously, it was down to each individual business. But what we’re seeing in heavily regulated environments is more focus on the supply chain, more focus on procurement, and risk mitigation. So for me, it’s one, you’re starting to see some of the practices from the public sector come up, move across. All of that is driven to how do they not impact the customer, the end consumer, and how they put better processes in place. Private obviously have a lot more flexibility in regards to wider innovation than potentially public. However, one of the things which we’re about to see, as Travis alluded to, is TPP, which is the Transforming Public Sector Procurement. And these are all new regulations coming in to help new ways of working. And it’d be great, Travis, to understand some of that innovation from your perspective, because as an e-sender and working with you and our other clients, we’re working hard to make sure we’re delivering. We’re seeing the value in it. And it’s just seeing it, hearing it from the people on the ground affected by it.

Travis Crouch – 00:23:02:

Yeah, it’s still very new, not even live years. And with all these things, you rarely get the benefits once you put it into practice, I think. But our initial thoughts and what kind of what we can see already is the increase in number of transparency notices that are required. Not just the transparency notice, because there’s one that we call transparency list, but they’re all the notices that are required. And then also the central digital platform where suppliers will have to register and register themselves as a unique organization, getting their unique identifier. We’ll help put that data journey to understand where suppliers are interacting across public sector. And then also we’ll be able to see procurement journeys from start to finish. We’re getting to that point where everything’s starting to become joined up. And then the idea is you’ll get reporting from the central digital platform, which will help you see all contracts that are awarded to Optimus, for instance. What are those contract terms and lengths? I mean, there’s a time rather than the actual terms and conditions. Although that is, you know, whatever’s not commercially sensitive, you can find what’s being published. So I think that kind of data journey that’s happening and being driven by Camden Office is impressive. And that kind of level of transparency is going to be second to none kind of world leading stuff. So we’re looking forward to that. And we’re looking forward to having something led by Camden Office in terms of central data identifiers, key identifiers for suppliers, so that we can all ensure that we can talk the same thing when we’re trying to join data sets up across government organizations. So, yeah, it’s there’s a whole host of benefits in there, which we’re looking forward to. Actually, we’re looking forward to. But then at the same time, there’s a lot of stuff to do in terms of getting commercial teams ready to make sure we get best value out of the new processes that are being delivered.

Sian Lloyd – 00:24:56:

That’s a really interesting point there, your final thought, Travis, because I’m interested to know change, when implementing change, there’s sometimes resistance, there’s sometimes challenges. How do you see the future there and perhaps what strategies do you have in place?

Travis Crouch – 00:25:10:

I think one of the key benefits of the new regulations benefits, but the wins, is the fact that any of the frameworks that were let before under the old regulations will still be in place. So we’ll have a hybrid approach for a while where we use a lot of commercial services frameworks and so do a lot of public sector organizations. And those, if they’ve been let under the old regulations, will still be calling off using the old frameworks until those frameworks are replaced. So there’s a bit of a period of a hybrid of running some of the old and the new regs together. But the key is where we are running some of those more complex, larger procurements post-go-live. When talking to commercial staff, they are just really excited about it and they want to get in there. You’ve got the new competitive flexible procedure, which gives a little bit more flexibility in terms of how they can approach a procurement and how they can approach the market. They are keen to get going with it. And the cabin office have released some really good training material online. You’ve got the transforming procurement training material, which we’ve set ourselves some targets internally within DHSE to get all commercial staff through that 10 module training program. And I’m saying it’s good. And you on your own sitting online doing a course and it takes 10 plus hours to get through it. It’s not small by any feet and it’s good stuff. Most people are getting their heads around it, starting to learn and understand the differences and seeing where they can use that to release commercial benefit in the future.

Sian Lloyd – 00:26:45:

Thank you for sharing that with us. Gareth, I think we had some questions around SRM, effective supplier relationship management. It would be great if you feel you could lead us into that.

Gareth Burch – 00:26:56:

So earlier I mentioned about geopolitical risk and how it’s impacting procurement at the moment. I think some of my thoughts on geopolitical risk is the impact to procurement teams today. Over the last few years, as I mentioned, there’s been a number of uncertainties. We face a number of, I think the term is unprecedented circumstances. And it’s how procurement teams have had to react. I remember sitting on a laptop during COVID trying to monitor supply chain stability. Availability versus service delivery versus sourcing hardware, software, and almost panic stations for weeks, months on end. And that wasn’t a core service like the HSE and NHS England were under even more immense pressure. One of the things for me, I think the mitigation and the learnings from a procurement perspective really come back to the data discussion we were having. How we understand our data, how we classify the data. And it’s about quality not quantity. The quality versus quantity is always difficult, especially in a regulated environment where you have to go through. I’m going to apologize for the use of the term, the red tape. And we go through the red tape to capture more data to help a process where the quality of the core data, which we really need, can be overlooked sometimes from my experience. And that stuff is the key driving force with how we mitigate geopolitical. I think it’s difficult especially when we talk about a single view. A single supply chain view without bringing in additional data sources into a central place where we can create that central view to help us. Because we have faced the challenges from COVID through to the conflict in Ukraine and Russia and through to more recently the issues within Gaza, each having a different impact on supply chain and bringing in different data sources to enrich data help us to mitigate. Because in the Russia example, when sanctions came in, I remember sitting at a computer trying to work out where my suppliers, I knew where my suppliers were, but how my suppliers, if any sanctions applied to my suppliers. And it was using another software, which then allowed me to create that view. But that software is over here. This software is over here. It’s not an integrated view, which created many issues for each geopolitical issue. Paris, how have you guys experienced some of that? And how have you tried or attempted to navigate that?

Travis Crouch – 00:29:26:

So from, as I was saying, you go back two years and we didn’t have the data that we’ve got today in one place. So. Very simply, just having visibility of the landscape is absolutely critical. But in terms of, like you mentioned, they’re using external data sources to help with that risk mitigation due diligence is a key part of our process. We use data fees, for instance, financial due diligence. Down at Bradstreet, they provide some information. I know they can provide a lot more, too, in that space but we also have supplier watch list flag within the system, which connects in with our fraud team to do analysis of our supplier database and kind of mark things off whether we’re suppliers on a watch list for whatever reason. And that could be a number of different reasons why they appear on there. So we’ve got different things going on in that space. But one thing I’d really like to tap into more is understanding supply chains and the second, third, fourth tier and how that kind of it influences risk management for our larger contracts. And this is something we need to work on and develop. We’ve seen other solutions across other government departments, how they’ve done it using tools like Power BI and sending out reports to suppliers and manually crunching it together. I think the automation in that market is not great yet and something that we want to try and influence and help develop in the future. There’s huge opportunity with that. And I think also then using those data feeds and that kind of market information to supplement those records of the supply chain would then help understand a risk position of a contract end-to-end rather than just here’s your one supply at the top. They’re doing really well. They’re all based in the UK and there’s no trouble at all. However, one of their key subcontractors is based out in Africa somewhere or there’s some sort of earthquake or whatever. You need that information to help drive that. But yeah, there’s a lot more that we can do in that space.

Gareth Burch – 00:31:31:

And more of a kind of general comment within the procurement world at the moment. Speaking with an ex-colleague and friend recently, we actually came to a bit of a statement conclusion where we actually feel that the way procurement roles, particularly within regulated environments, are going is risk first. Are you seeing that within the public sector?

Travis Crouch – 00:31:53:

I think you could say that, but I think it’s for the right reasons. I think just because it might be that we’re risk averse today doesn’t mean that we’re more risk averse than we were before. Maybe we weren’t considering the risks before. Or not that we’re only finding out about the implications of some of these things as more data is readily available to see the impacts. So I would say it’s people’s consciences at the end of the day and managing risk at a kind of corporate level that you go, this is not the kind of thing you want something to put on an organization. So for me, it’s bringing the data but getting that information, which just helps you make those decisions back to what I’m saying earlier, data-driven decisions just pushes you in the right direction.

Gareth Burch – 00:32:35:

Definitely. Data is king.

Sian Lloyd – 00:32:37:

I wanted to say thanks for sharing your insight and being so candid there, Travis. And also, Gareth, I know that’s an area that you’re really passionate about. So thank you for sharing that with us as well. I’m conscious we were talking about AI earlier. We were flagging it up. So let’s get to that now and dig a bit deeper. I just really wanted to open up and get some thoughts from both of you, really, about perhaps how you think it’s going to impact the future of public procurement. Who’d like to go first?

Travis Crouch – 00:33:05:

I don’t mind starting, I think, could talk an hour and a half on this topic quite easily and quite enjoy the conversation. But I think in summary, it’s still early days and well aware that the tools and capabilities that are out there are so good already. And they’re going to make such a big difference. But it is still very early days. And there’s going to be a lot of lessons learned along the way. And it’s going to take a lot of effort to get to where, in my head, I think we need to be. But there is a huge push across governments. We’ve got the incubator for AI that was set up just recently in government. That is, its sole purpose is to try and use AI to improve efficiency and core services across government and you can tell that it’s going to be massive. And even in procurement, we know that it’s going to be huge and make a huge difference. And for a very high-level kind of analysis of data, it’s going to be telling you where to look and identifying things for you. It’s going to help you with drafting key documentation. And then even more importantly, summarizing documentation. All of those sorts of things is where it can do the heavy lifting for you and point you in the right direction. And don’t get me wrong. It’s going to need analysts and tech people and lots of people investing behind the scenes. So, for me, you’ll see a shift, I think, over time. Don’t get me wrong. We’re still a far way away from this. But we’ll see a shift of more tech people driving the machine rather than people out there doing and delivering kind of procurement in the kind of way they will now because you’ll have one person can do more with better tools, but then you’ll have more people driving better outcomes. So you’d see the quality improve. You’d see more value being achieved. You’d see all that kind of stuff because the tech would be better. But I think in terms of numbers of people, only over a long period of time, you’ll start seeing that drop but you’ll see a shift, I think, of resources and skills.

Gareth Burch – 00:35:07:

The power of AI, it could be phenomenal. It could revolutionize procurement and really help procurement elevate itself. I think that for me, there’s three things which I think worry me about AI. One is the data. I know we keep coming back to data, but if we don’t have good quality data, AI will not have the same impact as it would with the right data set. And don’t get me wrong, different levels of AI can find the data, interpret the data. But it’s then moving to the second problem with the adoption. And the adoption is on two levels. One is adoption, and it’s probably more compliance-led. Higher up the decision-making tree, how far we want to go or don’t want to go, driven by security factors. But then it’s also the end-user adoption. Will people see it as a benefit or a robot replacing them? And I think that’s a really hard place. I think the messaging, from my perspective anyway, is it’s a tool to help enable different professionals. It’s a tool to help reduce time, make you more efficient, and more effective where you add value. And then the last one is, I touched on it, is security. The volume of data potentially flowing through AI technologies, what happens? Because AI could do lots of great things, but in a world where we have GDPR applicable to us, what happens with that data? Where does it go? How is it processed? These then create some of the risks and concerns which again flag back to more of the compliance decision and the adoption. But I think if we’re able to tackle the three of them, AI has got such a bright future to support procurement, help take some more manual tasks, automate them, help the end-user to be more effective, and help drive real value back to the business.

Sian Lloyd – 00:36:53:

Just backhannowing there on what you were saying, they’re certainly here now, Gareth, isn’t it? And here to stay.

Gareth Burch – 00:36:58:

100%. And it’s exciting. I’m currently working with our clients, including Travis, on our AI strategy within Atamis. And in all honesty, we are taking that broad brush approach with AI. We are not just focusing on Gen AI, but we’re actually thinking of all aspects of AI from automated process to Gen AI working with our clients, it’s quite exciting. Every time AI is mentioned, Travis’s face lights up every time. He absolutely loves the conversation. And he’s a real driving force from a public sector viewpoint for us with the progression of AI. So it’s great having someone like Travis in our corner pushing us to help support and target the areas we need to deliver in an effective way. So it’s not a case of we just introduce AI, brush our hands, walk away. It’s actually introducing where it’s going to add value, where it’s going to get the maximum return on investment for Travis and our other clients. Because that then helps challenges I mentioned around adoption, security, and it just helps us massively. So it’s really interesting. I think it’s only going to grow, but in the right way. Travis, do you think there’s any specific technologies which could revolutionize public sector procurement in the next few years?

Travis Crouch – 00:38:17:

AI? It’s got to be AI, doesn’t it? And different variations of that. For me, generative AI and the way that’s going is just so exciting to the point of helping, I think, commercial colleagues evaluate procurements. And every commercial colleague that I talk to and listen to this, they’ll be going, Can’t do that. That’s something a human must do. So I think it can get there. And I think it can do so much. And I think it can also help identify things, the risks that a single person can’t do on their own. It’s taking the brains of millions of people and summarizing it almost instantly. You don’t, maybe not spot a risky area within a contract. You need a particular KPI to cover that. And you’ve got 10 out of 12. Maybe it’s spotted two that you didn’t even think of. Oh, that’s great. Actually, maybe I should have that. I think that sort of stuff is really going to change the landscape.

Gareth Burch – 00:39:13:

Have you started bringing the people on the journey with you? And if so, how have you been approaching it?

Travis Crouch – 00:39:18:

Not so much just yet. And I’ll tell you what, so in government commercial function, there is a working group focusing solely on AI in commercial teams and the implementation of AI. And we know that AI is as dangerous as it is useful. We’ve got to be very careful around implementation of that. Lots of commercially sensitive information floating around in our systems. Lots of potentially secret information across the whole of government. And what we can’t have is that information flowing into these generative AI tools, populating someone else’s questions, somewhere else asking, what should he be careful of? And then off it’s going, spouting out all the secret stuff. We can’t have it doing that. So it’s really important that we go through the relevant processes to make sure it lands safely. And this AI working group, anything that’s implemented, using AI, which is innovative, goes through this working group. And if there’s any governance or approvals that are in there, we can share that and we can do it once, do it right, which then opens up the pathway to other organizations implementing that quickly.

Sian Lloyd – 00:40:23:

It’s great to know that this area is really a passion point for you, Travis, as well. And it really does light your face up. So thanks very much for that. We’ve covered so much in this podcast. It’s been absolutely illuminating. But Travis, we have got a final two questions for you now.

Gareth Burch – 00:40:38:

So Travis, I think it’s safe to say the boldest prediction for the future of procurement is going to be AI. How do you envisage the role of procurement evolving with the introduction of AI?

Travis Crouch – 00:40:49:

I touched on this earlier, but I see the long-term kind of the augmentation of AI technologies into procurement process. We’ve already seen the number of new notices that transforming public procurement will bring in and tools like yours, Gareth and Atamis, will automate those processes using tools like AI to the point where the administration side of it is going to become so fine. However, you’ll always need that human interaction to make sure it’s right. So what you’ll find is your common procurement person will need more training on technology, understanding how artificial intelligence works, more of that analyst sort of brain. But I think that’s what we’re seeing just in general. People are using data more and systems more and no matter what, you’ve got that little computer in your pocket that can do all that stuff for you. So I think that will be a natural change and won’t just be within the procurement world. It’ll be across all industries. But yeah, that’s got to be something we keep an eye on. As and when we bring in this technology, it’s not just simply you go in there, you push this button. People really need to understand what it’s doing, how it’s got there. So. I think that’s your main trajectory is in the inclusion of understanding how some of these core functionalities work and how they can help you and then also what things to watch out for. So I think, yeah, but that’s going to be slow. It’s not going to be it’s going to be talking ten years, I think, by the time that’s completely revolutionized.

Sian Lloyd – 00:42:25:

And just a final one from me. It’s something we’re going to ask all our guests across the podcasts. Looking back even to the start of your career, why are you happy that you went into procurement?

Travis Crouch – 00:42:37:

I’m happy I came into procurement. I think I’m like a lot of people, almost fell into procurement. I think when I first applied for my first procurement job, I was a DEFRA working in project management office. I didn’t know what the word procurement meant. I’ll be honest with you, 2011, I was like, what is this? Is this something to do with buying stuff or what is it? I didn’t realize the complexities behind it. And once I got the role, it opened my eyes to that corporate service and how essential it was to any organization to make sure it was managing its risk with its suppliers and delivering value. And when people are saying we need to save money, kind of procurement’s like an invest to save. You need to put money into the team that are going to help you save money. So it was always really interesting and it’s always been core to each of the organizations. You’re always really close to the center of how it operates. So there’s always something exciting going on and the landscape changes. All the time. So for me, landing in that systems and data world was my calling. Always loved working with technology and to still use that procurement knowledge and experience that I’ve got to try and influence. And it’s worked out for me and it’s something I try my best to keep people who join my team, to keep them on that path. It isn’t for everyone, but yeah, procurement is something that I think the word procurement is moving now to commercial really because it’s a bit wider than just the procurement side. Yeah. It’s a great place to work and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Sian Lloyd – 00:44:06:

Your passion certainly shines through and thanks so much for joining us today. It’s been great to chat with you.

Gareth Burch – 00:44:12:

Thank you, Travis.

Travis Crouch – 00:44:13:

Cheers, Gareth. Cheers, Sian.

Gareth Burch – 00:44:16:

That wraps up this episode of Powering Procurement. We hope you enjoyed that as much as we did.

Sian Lloyd – 00:44:21:

Visit our website at Atamis.co.uk or follow us on LinkedIn to continue the conversation.

Gareth Burch – 00:44:28:

Remember to subscribe on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you choose to listen.

Sian Lloyd – 00:44:35:

Thanks for joining us and see you next time on Powering Procurement.