The CPO’s 90-Day Playbook: People, Process, Systems

What should a procurement leader do in their first 90 days to make a real impact? In a special in-studio jam session, veteran CPO Ash Hall joins Proc and Roll to share his proven playbook for career progression and leadership in procurement. Drawing on an unconventional journey that took him from a music major to a CPO transforming global organizations like Intel, Danaher, and Lincoln Electric, Ash provides a step-by-step guide for any leader stepping into a new role.

The core of the conversation is Ash’s detailed and actionable 90-day assessment, a framework designed to diagnose a new procurement function and build a three-to-five-year roadmap for success.

The Three Pillars of the 90-Day Assessment

Ash breaks down the overwhelming task of a new role into three manageable pillars: People, Process, and Systems.

• People: How to objectively assess team skills with a 13-competency test and structure your org for success
• Process: How to tackle inconsistencies when there are “20 different ways across the company” to do the same thing.
• Systems: The two foundational technologies every procurement function must prioritize to enable success
• Leadership: A unique motivational tool called the “Mission Coin” to align your team and recognize great work

Watch now or read the transcript below.

Transcript: Proc-N-Roll | The CPO’s 90-Day Playbook: People, Process, Systems

Conrad: Hello everybody. Welcome to Proc and Roll. Today is a special episode, we call it a jam session. Today we’ve got our second edition with my good friend Ash Hall. It’s great to have you here with us. We have this tradition of meeting people that didn’t really go to school for procurement; they kind of fell into it. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Ash: It definitely wasn’t part of my plan. I always thought I’d be an attorney. I started off as a music major, took two years off, lived in Brazil, and when I got back, I added a double major in Portuguese literature. I got admitted to law school, but my father, an attorney, suggested I might want to consider a management degree first. So, I ended up getting an MBA. I think the only reason I was admitted without work experience was my diverse background.

Conrad: It wouldn’t surprise me, because music is very structured.

Ash: Very structured, you find patterns. When it was time to interview for internships, I was lucky to get on the interview list for Intel. I remember the recruiter, Craig Fruhan, asked, “Music? What do you possibly know about procurement?”. I had played in bands since high school and was in charge of mass-producing our cassette tapes to sell at shows. So I talked about how I would do the analysis and buy in bulk. They thought it was sufficient enough to give me a chance. My internship was in the travel department, which was owned by procurement, and it was all about safety. The internet was brand new, and I proposed we do a website for our travelers. After the internship, they gave me a job offer as a senior buyer. That’s when I met you, Conrad.

Conrad: I love the idea of people having diverse backgrounds. I have a biochemistry degree, which seems like it’s from a different planet sometimes.

Ash: I agree. I remember when I first joined, my mentors were really hardcore, aggressive negotiators. Most of those folks are no longer in procurement. It was always, “one of us is going to win, the other is going to lose,” which isn’t a recipe for longevity. I remember doing a bid where nobody wanted our business because they had been burned too much and there was no relationship.

Conrad: You were at Intel for how many years and then went through a number of other companies. How did you think about the departure from Intel and making those career changes?

Ash: I was there just shy of 11 years, so I also think I stayed a bit too long. My last role was managing third-party logistics, and I was speaking a lot at conferences, so I kept getting calls from headhunters. I left to go to a company called Danaher. They noticed my experience was all in indirect procurement, so they sent me on a rotation to a factory to round out my supply chain experience. Six months into that rotation, they sold that aerospace business to Meggitt, so I switched companies again, not by choice. Meggitt was a great UK-based company. They asked me to go to the UK for a couple of years to lead a transformation for an oil and gas business. After that, the head of operations for Meggitt left for a small defense company called Mercury Systems and recruited me to come work for him. Then, that led to my next role with Lincoln Electric, a nearly $5 billion company that wanted to create a structured global procurement function.

Conrad: I have probably talked to three or four people that are new in a procurement role and they’re trying to figure out what their 90-day plan is. As you moved to these jobs, how did you approach them to build credibility and impact?

Ash: It can be overwhelming. To me, it’s about people, process, and systems. At Mercury and Lincoln Electric, I started with a 90-day assessment. On the people side, I first assess the team’s skills. I use a company in the UK called Source Exchange; they have an objective, two-hour test based on 13 competencies defined by CIPS. This helps create a personalized development plan for everyone. The second part is assessing the organization to see if it’s optimal. For process, I look at how process-oriented the company is, what’s documented, and where we can standardize. For systems, you’ve got to have the data for your analytics and a system that enables your processes. From that assessment, I was able to build three- to five-year roadmaps.

Conrad: I have this memory of a mission coin you created. It would be awesome if you could share that story.

Ash: This is common in the U.S. military; they’ll give you a coin to commemorate being part of a mission. I’ve done these at my last two companies. One side of the coin clearly states our mission. For procurement, the elements are getting quality products and services, on time, at an optimal price, and done the right way. We give one to everybody on the team at the beginning, and we also use them as awards during our quarterly town halls and share them with internal partners.

Conrad: When you’re looking at the technology and systems decisions in that first 90 days, how do you think about where to prioritize in the tech stack?

Ash: The top two are data and a system that enables your process. The spend analytics is absolutely critical, but you also need a system for transactions. If a company is literally working off spreadsheets with no ERP system at all, that becomes the priority.

Conrad: How would you predict AI will impact the procurement professional’s role over time?

Ash: I’ll use a non-business example of how AI just scares the crap out of me. On the music side, my friend from my high school band threw a song we wrote through AI, and it totally re-did the instrumentation and came up with a different, spectacular voice. As a creator, it almost zapped my will to write. But here’s what I see with AI: I want it to take all the administrative, automatable stuff out of the way so my people can think. AI analytics are going to be fantastic; it’s not going to make a decision for me, but it’s going to give enough data to where the professional is now more empowered to make better decisions.

Conrad: I agree, but I do think one of the things all of us should be doing right now is taking a deep look at our data and figuring out how to clean it up.

Ash: You’re absolutely right, and that’s why I’m saying let it be a tool in that process. You have to have a human to see that AI makes some dumb decisions, like putting our lithium spend in some funky areas because the UNSPSC code is listed under a medical category. I’m not ready to trust it, but I think it can help.

This transcript has been edited for clarity while maintaining all substantive content