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The Big Interview with David Kay - Head UK Procurement, Unum Ltd

Written by: Supply Chain Online
Published on: 12 Jul 2018

PROCUREMENT HEADS | The Big Interview with David Kay

The Procurement Heads Big Interview Series launched in 2017, and features Procurement Professionals throughout London and the Home Counties. It’s an opportunity to shed some light on the specialist world of Procurement and those who work within it. To be featured in Procurement Head’s next Big Interview, contact info@procurementheads.com

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How did you get into Procurement?

My first experience of Procurement was about 25 years ago, while I was working for an air conditioning company called Carrier. My role at the time was running their orders and project books, when the Managing Director asked me to set up a Procurement function, and it was the best request I’ve ever had. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Procurement, but it just fitted with me. I have very strong customer focus and it’s imperative that what we do in procurement serves both internal and external customers well. The more exposure I had to Procurement, the more I wanted to learn, and the better I became at it. If you’re passionate about something, and I have loads of passion for Procurement, it fuels the creativity.

What does a typical day look like for you?

Every day is different. Some days I’m in back to back meetings, either internally or with suppliers. I do a lot of web conferencing with the leadership team in the US – and that can take anywhere from one hour to six! My role can be really varied, too, as often I get involved in ad-hoc tasks and projects such as this Big Interview. I don’t always know what’s coming in day to day, and although we must plan to some degree, we have to be ready to adapt. My team is very lean so we need to perform efficiently.

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What aspects of your role do you love?

I love pushing the boundaries and I love working with creative people. I think to be successful in Procurement it’s fundamental that you have a strong personality. You need people to want to work with you. Mandates and authorities are worth nothing – people need to understand why you want to go in a direction and support it because they trust you. I really like working with people, and creating solutions for problems that arise, uncovering value where it wasn’t perceived possible. That’s what gives me real satisfaction.

Is there any part of your role that you find challenging?

Unnecessary drawn out meetings… I really dislike wasting anybody’s time, so I often decline meetings if I feel there isn’t anything to be gained from sitting down that you couldn’t get from a quick phone call. I genuinely respect people’s time!

Some of the main services we offer such as travel, we actually set up ourselves and have full ownership of. We run our support like a business within the business, which is great, but if something goes wrong we need to be ready to react – as there’s nobody else to ask to fix it. It’s a positive thing but it can also prove challenging at times!

What success are you most proud of?

Forming our Procurement brand here. I do think of it as a brand. We are seen as an innovative, yet a very safe pair of hands. When I was building this operation a few years back, I won CEO Manager of the year across the whole company, which doesn’t tend to happen to procurement people; it’s normally sales or customer service staff in the running, so I’m very proud of that. 

I’m also proud of how the US view us. The US operation under my boss, Group CPO, is a 200+ strong team compared to my team of 3. They have ten times our spend, but actually we get a lot of air time from them because we’re good team players and think outside the box. If there are issues preventing us moving forward, we find a way to go over or around them - we find solutions. Our culture here in the UK is refreshing – and I think that’s because of our size and the fact we can be agile. We have adopted the mindset that we’ll try our best and we don’t view failure as failure - it’s a chance to learn. We’ve created a really positive environment for people to come to work. 

To read David’s full Big Interview and for further information about Procurement Heads, please visit the Procurement Heads website: www.procurementheads.com

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