CASE STUDY / INTUIT
CASE STUDY
F INDING GREAT TALENT FOR procurement starts with emotional intelligence, not ego, says Emma Chontos. This ability, she adds, is critical to managing Intuit’s key suppliers and stakeholders. “There are a ton of people in this industry that love zero-sum deal-making – those who love to negotiate and don’t understand the benefits of a fair relationship with suppliers. Here, people have to check their ego at the door,” she says. “I love humility, authenticity and candour. These qualities are hard to find but as procurement becomes more automated and pivots to focus on partner or supplier management, it will come to rely on that emotional intelligence.” Chontos says she looks for end-to-end thinkers who demonstrate a team mentality and consider the broader impact of any deal they do – and would personally rather be known as the ‘Chief Impact Officer’ than the CPO. “My intention is not to slow people down or find the lowest price. My aim is to accelerate the supplier relationship and the business together, and to realise resiliency and innovation across those relationships.”
She joined Intuit as their first CPO three years ago after leading a procurement transformation at Paramount Pictures. A two-time IronMan triathlete who moved to San Diego, California last year and started surfing at 50, Chontos understands the importance that endurance, risk taking and the need to go-slow-to-go- fast play in driving durable change. Prior to her arrival, the procurement function had an opportunity to move beyond tactics and modernise its processes and systems to better support the changing needs of the business. “We took a fresh look at the opportunity for strategic sourcing and realignment to the company’s goals and imperatives,” she says. “Teams were siloed, which meant the true benefit of leveraging source-to-report end-to-end was not being fully realised.” She recognised that aligning procurement and the suppliers it oversees with the aims of the company would bring significant value, as would approaching the supply base as ‘One Intuit’. “I want procurement to be a thought leader, where it’s not just about having a seat at the table, but the business wants you there because you bring value and can help it to achieve its goals, which are focusing on what supports customers, rather than what boosts margin.” Intuit now employs more than 10,000 people worldwide, operates in 20 locations across nine countries and generated $9.6 billion in revenue in its fiscal year 2021.
Running to keep up
Intuit, which counts TurboTax, QuickBooks, Mint and Credit Karma among its top products, is morphing into a global technology platform, with live, expert services that provide help to customers. Procurement needed to evolve to better support this development, and Intuit CFO, Michelle Clatterbuck brought in Chontos to make it happen. “Intuit has some ‘big bets’ about how we evolve as a platform company,” says Chontos. “Currently we’re on this huge growth trajectory, where we have an opportunity to further bring together our technology and the partners that underpin it.”
Accelerated alignment
MAKING CONNECTIONS
Intuit’s strategy to become an AI-driven expert platform, combined with secular trends, contributed to the need for a responsive partner platform. “The pandemic gave us tailwinds rather than headwinds,” says Chontos. “These secular trends include a shift to virtual solutions, acceleration to online and omnichannel capabilities, and digital money offerings. It accelerated plans. What we thought would take two years we did in a matter of months. We launched tools to support customers very quickly. Our supplier base was critical to this.” This expedited pace gave her department – a 90-strong team covering the continuous improvement of indirect procurement, marketing and services sourcing, technology sourcing, purchase-to-pay and controls and compliance – the freedom it needed to push through some essential improvements. To be able to properly support the business, procurement required modernising. “Processes were highly manual and not scalable. It was impeding my team’s ability to do their best work. We’ve now moved from procurement to strategic sourcing; set up a data analytics team so we better understand where our spend is; and developed a contract management function. →
MY INTENTION IS NOT TO SLOW PEOPLE DOWN, BUT TO ACCELERATE THE SUPPLIER RELATIONSHIP AND THE BUSINESS TOGETHER.
Procurement at technology company Intuit is partnering up with internal stakeholders and external suppliers to deliver value and impact
QUICK FACT: INTUIT EMPLOYS 10,000+ PEOPLE WORLDWIDE IN 20 LOCATIONS ACROSS 9-COUNTRIES. SOME INDIVIDUALS ARE FOCUSED ON FORGING STRONG CONNECTIONS WITH KEY SUPPLIERS.
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STATE OF FLUX
2021 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
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