MarPro - The Marketing Procurement Podcast

Shereen Lannoye | Astellas Pharma

August 11, 2021 Rusty Pepper, Dana Small, Shereen Lannoye Episode 5
MarPro - The Marketing Procurement Podcast
Shereen Lannoye | Astellas Pharma
Show Notes Transcript

On this episode of MarPro our guest is Shereen Lannoye, the Associate Director of Global Procurement, Marketing Agencies, and Production at Astellas Pharma US.  

Key learnings from this episode include...

  • Marketing to marketers to earn a seat at the table
  • Strategic Planning
  • Maximizing the value of QBR's
  • Supplier Relationship Management success

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Dana:

good morning, everybody. This is Dana small. Welcome to another edition of.

Rusty:

The marquee procurement podcast

Dana:

in the morning, rusty. Sorry, put you on the spot. We haven't practiced that intro in a while.

Rusty:

Oh, good. It's excited to have another great conversation about marketing procurement. We've got a great guest on the show today and we'll get her introduced in a second. But before we do that, I wanted to give a big shout out to you. Dana, you have been kicking ass at work and you got a much DDA promotion. We don't talk about ourselves very much as always talking about other functions. Congrats on the big promotion. I know you're going in the office today. So let everybody know about that

Dana:

promotion. Yeah, no, it's really exciting. They actually made and shifted a position once. Uh, my old associate director left and went over to the direct side, which we have Tom on one of the five. And then they created a role where it's commercial, very commercial heavy, but still HR professional services. It, I am, and I got the role and I'm super excited and stoked. And it's a lot of times I think getting a promotion, it's not just about getting promotion. Sometimes it's reinvigorating yourself in career and getting motivated again to say, okay, great. Now we have some new stuff I can take on. Now. I have a new role, a new things to try to challenge me. So. Thanks for the shout out. I do appreciate it. I tend to things be quiet. Just go along with them, but yeah, much appreciated and very happy to have the promotion and actually I'm hiring. So. While we plugged

Rusty:

that real quick.

Dana:

Yeah. So it's actually a manager that I'd share over with another resource. It's it? I'm trying to think there's some, each art categories that we'd have, but it's very much a shared service. So we are currently looking for right now, local candidates testing the market, seeing who's out there, who's available, but it's a tough market right now. The job market is hot and it's hot for people who can have completely remote positions. I think a lot of people are testing the market out there, and unfortunately we're not completely remote right now, but I think in the future, the market dictates, Hey, you can't find somebody unless you hire somebody who is completely remote. We're going to have to switch over to. Uh, and a year in California, I'm in the bay area. So,

Rusty:

so if there's anybody out there with procurement background, it's not necessarily marketing procurement

Dana:

person though. No, not at all. And I think in the job description too, I also put, if you have consulting experience or IOT experience, there's a lot of things that I think translate well into a sourcing role. And I think, you know, ex-consultants, I've seen do really well in this position, even if it's just that you don't have to have medical background, just some knowledge of sourcing. I think it's easier to teach somebody pharmaceuticals than it is to teach somebody sourcing from scratch.

Rusty:

You also get to trade them your way and get them set up. W without that habits, they may have a good understanding and there may be an expert in that field, but the habits just don't work with your culture or your workflow. So I think a positive side of that is just being able to train people your way. That's exciting. Well, good luck with finding a candidate and also congrats on the promotion. So, not that we've

Dana:

got a third person here. We do, we should let her talk to. And I really like her because she was by procure con buddy. And the last time we had in session procure con in Austin, which is almost like two years ago now, which is crazy to think about two years and how much has changed. But Shereen is here with us today. She's she works at a. And I'll let you give yourself a little bit of an intro and you have lots of background to share. So please make sure you share your extensive procurement experience.

Shereen:

Thank you, rusty and Dana for inviting me today. I'm very excited to be here. And so I'll start I'm Shereen, Illinois. I have about 19 to 20 years of procurement experience, about four to five years of marketing experience, marketing procurement experience. And I feel like my career started with being a generalist and procurement where I advantaged various categories, multiple categories at the same time. Even from it, two big, large BPO deals and marketing was one little pillar in my slew of categories. I've now come to a position in my career where I can have, I can focus all my energy and time and. Marketing creative, digital and production. So it's narrower. It allows me to really dive deeper into the category, understand strategies that really work for the U S and global cause I'm the global category manager at Astellas for creative and digital agencies. And so that's also another thing it's going from a us focus to a global focus that I've also done in the past four or five years. With that comes really interesting challenges because you look at what works in the U S doesn't necessarily work in Japan, as you might know, or might not know. Astellas is a Japanese pharma company and deaf. So we have large groups of people working all over the world. So from my perspective, I think procurement and doing marketing procurement has specifically creative and digital. It's given me the opportunity. To understand what are the drivers in the us and how they vary globally. And how can I use all of this information to create global strategies that are ultimately going to benefit Astellas and then in turn our patients.

Dana:

So there must be interesting working for not a US-based company. I have not had the experience. Is there anything or any intricacies to it? Would you say they're more supportive of sorority sourcing or are they less supportive of source?

Shereen:

Yeah. So that's a good question. Because prior to Astellas, I worked at Lundbeck pharmaceuticals. They're a Danish pharma company and the, and before that I was a blue cross blue shield of Illinois and various other companies. And so to me, the support for sourcing is different and the rules around how. Expect sourcing to be part of the process is different in the us. It was highly recommended, not ever mandated. So you use skills like influencing skills and networking skills and a CPO that's hopefully very dynamic and can convince the business that procurement is a value add to going to a Danish company where there was a. Procurement was in the process flow and you had to use them being in the Japanese culture. It's very similar to that. There's not a lot of influencing. It's just the way it is. And it's very process-driven. And so that's working out great though, because from, from being in procurement, I feel like dad really helps me drive procurement policies throughout the organization. Now the U S commercial is really different. And in that, that influencing isn't. They are not mandated here in the U S yeah, it is. But you know what I've learned through all of this is that stakeholder management at any company, no matter the region or the country is paramount to success a hundred

Dana:

percent. I agree with you rusty. Shut that. Look on your

Rusty:

face. Yeah, the wheels are turning. You were saying it's not, they're not mandated to use you here in the U S. Correct. Yeah. What challenges does that place on you specifically? Because you're dealing with a pretty important, you're dealing with agencies above the line. Talk about that.

Shereen:

What I've learned is when, when I walked into my current role, the, the us commercial team had a, they weren't very excited about using procurement for all their projects. There were some funds that they wanted to use procurement for. They were ready to do that, but not every one of them. And I've found personally that I really needed to develop relationships with the key stakeholders. I had to identify who those people were, understand what barriers. Between themselves and procurement and try to break those down. I was interviewed, I have done that and I can say I'm very proud of what I've been able to accomplish there. When I, before I started, even during the interview, I was one of the people that interviewed me was from the marketing department. And I was told that they have noticed. To work with procurement. This is part of the job they're going to they're interviewing me because they need to interview me. They were asked to interview me, but they really don't want to work with procurement. Just let's just lay that out there. They said, and I was like, okay, this is going to be fun. This is,

Dana:

I

Rusty:

actually liked the fact that they had a marketing person in there in that interview process. She knew what she was signing up to read. You knew when you got there, this could be a challenge, right? I look at that as, Hey, you came on, you know what? I can take this on and that's pretty cool. But at the same time, there's a lot of value. And I'm curious to hear, because I want you to finish your story. I've got bedding, the person that you interviewed with, y'all probably got a pretty good working relationship.

Shereen:

Yep. You're spot on trustee. She is actually a confidant and a friend at this point. She is somebody I highly respect and really enjoy working with. And we have a really high level of trust. So after a couple of years of being there, so yes, I did take on the challenge. I did make me nervous. I remember telling my husband, oh my gosh, what am I walking into? Um, but it's been wonderful. Like I really enjoy my time there right now.

Dana:

I think walking into a non-meat mandated environment is a challenge in itself, but I think you had an even tougher, cause I've walked into non-mandated environments. You had to tougher because you also had people who were like, yeah, no, thanks. We don't need you guys to don't talk to me. We don't want to talk to you. Not that we're just not mandated. We don't like you. And we don't want to talk to you. And so it's very impressive to me that you were able to, you know, create those bonds and relationships with those people that were like, yeah, you can go play in somebody else's sandbox.

Shereen:

Yeah. I know walking into a new company and especially one where people aren't comfortable working with procurement, you're walking into all the baggage they're bringing right experiences they've had with the procurement department in that company and at other companies. So it's that collective. Uh, reputation that you're trying to swim against upstream. And so it is really challenging to come in and say, okay, I am here. I'm a different person. And I really do care about your challenges.

Rusty:

What are the steps that you did to break down those barriers and the resistance that they traditionally had against working with procurement? Because you obviously have had success doing that. I think there's a lot of people out there that are facing similar challenges. And how did that? You have to market marketers, marketers, respect, marketing. It's like salespeople love to be sold to marketers, love to be marketed

Shereen:

to, but you know what I've found, what marketers, and then it really, every stakeholder wanted most wants most is trust. And they want to see that you actually do care about their project. Has value to you and you're not in there, you're not there just to claim savings. That is, and that is really not my reason for being there. Like I, my stakeholders that I work with, I have to go in there with the mindset of I'm here to support them, to ensure they are successful. And if success means meeting a certain target audience by a certain date, that's my. The saving thing can come on the backend and that's great. And I'll do everything I can so I can save them money. And then they more to now spend on a different project. But if you go in there with the attitude of, I need to get my savings goal, I need to make my target. That comes through in your conversations, it comes through in your interaction with folks, you really need to change your own mindset to say the person I'm talking to right now, they're important to me and their projects are important to me.

Dana:

Would you say with your other categories that you took a different approach or do you think you took a similar approach with other categories? Knowing that marketing is right a little bit different, it can drive ROI. It can drive revenue.

Shereen:

So I think I have a different, slightly different approach with marketing because it's a very people focused category. And so the relationship, the emotional intelligence required to really, um, be smart with these stakeholders is different than I would if I was working with a different set of, with a different category. Do you think

Dana:

you were more focused on cost with those other categories, like earlier in your career?

Shereen:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think earlier in my career, I personally, just speaking for myself, did not have the maturity to understand, um, that when you are talking to stakeholders and you are a support function like procurement, you really need to step in their shoes and understand their day-to-day challenges. And when you do, that's, when you're going to be the most successful, not coming in there with your own agenda, trying to say, I need to make this target. So you need to give me that project. It's not going to be. Not in my experience,

Rusty:

what you're saying really resonates for a couple reasons. Hey, I'm seeing a trend, Dana. I think you'd probably agree with everybody that we're talking we've talked to so far or they've had success was, is not focused on cost savings. It's been about aligning with understanding what their needs are and. Supporting that, and being there as an advocate in, on behalf of marketing, and I think this is enlightening for me because I honestly had a different perspective on the whole marketing procurement side before we really start the podcast, because I still thought about it as there was still a lot of savings. And that was the main focus, but I'm really getting convinced that when you have the right marketing procurement people in place and you got the right team in the right culture, the right. Marketing can get a lot of value in working with them. Because we are relieving pressure from them and you're taking on additional resources that they need,

Dana:

I think is interesting too, is that Shareen walked into, and it wasn't that long ago, the situation, right. It wasn't like it was 20 years ago or 15 years ago from my experience I haven't had where they've just been, like, we don't even want to talk to you. So the fact that she was able to go in and yeah, Both barriers and then bring it down. And it was recent. It wasn't like it was 20 years ago. I think really speaks to the fact that there are still some marketing procurement people out there who maybe don't have the empathy or emotional intelligence, as Shereen said, and are really getting the door slammed in procurement space for good. I think it really speaks volumes that even though we've had the good people on our show, but there still are some that either they come from the direct side or they just don't understand intricacies, but I think it's still out there that there are some people who aren't, um, on board with what we do. They're more procurement focused

Rusty:

until we find that person we're going to have a blast. And that shit that's where we're going to be all fired.

Dana:

You're going to get fired up.

Shereen:

When you talked about really stepping. When I mentioned like talking, stepping in the shoes of a stakeholder, understanding their challenges, I've had to go to my procurement leadership and push back on them on strategies that they think I should be using because they think it's great from a procurement lens. But I've had to argue back on behalf of my stakeholders saying no, that does make sense. And I'm not comfortable doing that for these reasons. So I've, so you really have to embody this notion of these marketing stakeholders. They're your people, you are there to support them. And I think that's what works because that's when you really walk a day in their shoes, it's a tough, it's a tough position.

Rusty:

Yeah. So staying on this topic and I, before we got on, I was doing some research on a status and I came across a strategic plan for your period, 21 through 25 that was released in may. I spent some time digging into, because I like these types of strategic plans because they give you a lot of insight into what they're looking at from a marketer, from a marketing lens, where's their focus going to be, but there's also. A lot on procurement and what they're doing on the operations and how much are they trying to drive out costs. And so what I found was very interesting when I went through this plan, which was published online and a couple of things that stood out to me, I love the vision to turn innovative science into value for patients putting the patients out there first. But there, the value component is in there. And in this context, it's outcomes that matter to patients divided by costs to the healthcare system of delivering those outcomes. That's how there you're equating your. But the three key performance goals that were called out were increase revenue, obviously increase pipeline value as a pharmaceutical company, you have to have that strong pipeline for future product and sales and the third. Increased core operational profit margin by 30%. And that's through the period of 21 through 25. That's pretty lofty. But that means that not only do there have to be improvements, but there's also got to be a lot of savings. And so when I started digging into it is hold down, SGNA selling general and administrative expenses, but investing in growth products and digital transformation. Which is going to increase costs. Obviously marketing's going to have a big part of that cause you gotta be preparing for new product launches readiness, and also you have all your digital initiatives to evolve the business and sales and marketing. It would be a part of that. The last thing was, is to drive efficiency and excellence, which is goes back down to reduction at the very bottom of that section. I saw procurement savings. And so those are the things that stood out to me about, because I was really focused on the marketing and the procurement side of it. So my question on this is what type of challenges and pressure does a situation like this when they do these strategic plans plays on marketing procurement teams, because you've got, marketing's going to be increasing, spend procurements, trying to drive down costs.

Shereen:

Yeah, really great observation, rusty. And I really appreciate that. You've gone to our website and tried to find the information and try to analyze it. Thank you for doing that. I will start off by saying though that sell us as leadership is funny. I really have a lot of respect for our leadership in the us and globally. And I feel like when they've put these mandates in place, they created the three or a three to five year program or plan. They have really thought about it very carefully around, like you said, marketing is going to increase, spend marketing needs to do X, Y, and Z procurement needs to bring costs down and we need to meet in the middle. From my perspective, it is the it's a perfect world and it doesn't feel like a challenge. It just feels like now the marketing commercial teams and procurement need to marry, and we need to walk hand in hand with those challenges, right? So if they need to increase their costs, I need to be walking right there with them to ensure that whatever services they're purchasing, we're doing it mindfully. We're making sure that we get the services we want with the right agency at the right time. So that's how I see that. So I don't see it as opposing. I see it as complimentary, the more I support them, the more they can save and then reinvest in other parts of the company.

Rusty:

But will they reinvest that or would they just take that and put that back into savings?

Shereen:

You know, that'll depend on. Our C-level suite and where they want to really invest those funds. It could be in research and development. It could be in savings. It could for really what they decide, but our goal is to bring them those funds. Oh,

Rusty:

I think it's great. It's it's I just, I would love to be able to look back over the, so for a period and see how that is progressing and where those challenges come in. Dana, when y'all are doing it, strategic plans like this and these things get rolled down. How does. I guess my big question is how does that affect procurement in the way that you're going to market and you're in your longterm?

Dana:

So the first thing that pops to mind when you say that is typically I think, oh, this is good because I've been in non-mandated environments. This is going to force them to come and work with me. They're going to need to leverage me and to be able to help them find the most value for their money. Not that we have to cut costs, but you want to do more with the same amount, if you have to. And if they are increasing, let's make sure we do it in the right way. Shereen said do it mindfully, but it still is. I think challenging because you want to have to find that balance so that you have to spend the money and you know that maybe if you cut costs on the agency, that could have a detrimental effect on revenue. And so you really have to be careful and mindful. Yes. Let's push back on the agencies. Yes. Let's push back on certain suppliers, but you don't have. Brow beat because in the end that probably isn't gonna be useful for either of you. And it's probably going to have a negative effect on the relationship and these people are viewed as part of the team. And so it definitely creates a little bit of tension. Type of situation, but I think in a good way to make sure that everybody's doing the right thing right. And on their toes and trying, like I said, like I've said before, if you do your job, you don't really have to focus on the savings. You can focus on process efficiencies and the savings will come when you can find other areas of inefficiencies within working with the supplier. It's yeah. It's just one of those things that I think it's good for a non-mandated environment.

Rusty:

I think that's actually an interesting insight perspective that you just shared because that wasn't an area that I thought, but it actually makes total sense that what initiatives like this come out, it forces the hand of marketers over say everybody, because this is published, it's out there, public. And every senior member, every executive has been right into this. And it is part of their points that they're having to align to it. Do you take these plans? These obviously this feature plan they publish online is different than the one they have internally, but does your team take the. And this for both of y'all. And do you walk that into, Hey marketing? Oh, you need to have this conversation. Let's talk about aligning our goals. Alignment's key is how do we get everybody aligned so that they understand, Hey, this is how we can help you buy first. So this is what we're looking.

Dana:

I haven't had that, so I'll let Shereen speak, but I know that at least if we have some type of high level corporate mandates, when we do like our longterm category strategy and plan, that's when we'll have the conversation of, okay, we have 10 agencies. Does it make sense to consolidate? Can we choose one digital agency? Can we maybe consolidate and have an AOR? Can we find efficiencies that way? There will drive a savings so you can do. More projects with maybe just one versus 10. To me having that long-term vision out there helps us say, Hey, we know you have, this is what your goal is. This is how we can try to help you achieve that goal.

Shereen:

That's exactly right. Dana. I would definitely second that when I've created global category strategies in the past year, we had to take all of that into account. How are we going to do more with less? How are we going to still continue to enable the. To achieve their target. So when rusty, you mentioned like it's a such a difficult position for procurement to be in. I think you're right. It is difficult because we still have our targets to meet those don't go away. But I think what's even harder is the role the marketers sits in. If you think about it, they've got a heavier load on their shoulders. They have to do a lot more with a lot. And I, and they really, and because of this mandate, I think they do see procurement as a part versus an adversary. Who's going to hinder their accomplishments or their challenges. And so I think Dana's right. I think this. In some ways forces their hand, but if you have those relationships, it doesn't feel like forcing.

Dana:

So a couple other things we talked about, and then maybe we can touch on. We've only got a few minutes left, but would still love to talk about owned all of the marketing. And you've recently separated out the categories like media for additional support. You want to give us a little bit more information about just how and the why, so that maybe people can understand what maybe a best practice might

Shereen:

be. Yeah, like I said earlier, like I've really been able to narrow down my focus. And when I first started at Astellas, I had all of marketing, creative, digital media communicate print, and I'm sorry. And PR it was really hard to focus all my energy on all of these different categories and really bring the right expertise and Dana as YOUmedia something that I haven't done for a long time. And so I used to have lots of questions and we'd have lots of conversations around media. And so. Giving that to somebody that has the expertise specifically in media was really helpful because we have somebody that understands it understands how it works. What are the best practices there? When now I can really focus on my area of experience is really creative and digital. So there's a lot of benefit of breaking it down that way. I think media is a different beast of its own and you need that deeper level of experience. Yeah, I think there's a

Dana:

natural separation between the media and then the creative and strategy. And most of the places that I've worked have, both those cap categories separated out, even if it's just two categories in marketing. Those two typically are handled separately because they are so different. Still are intermingled. So that's where I think the really hard part comes in of like you have the creative and strategy, but then you have to pull through to the media and the buys and make sure that it's all working and all the different omni-channel approaches. But again, media is just its own beast. And to have so many with that experience, I think really is, yeah, I don't have a ton of media either. That's not my expertise, but I think it is very useful to know that you have somebody on your team. At background and the information to be able to better support your people. Yeah. Another thing we actually talked about, which I'm moving more into in my new role is supplier relationship management and running programs with the agencies. And I'll say from a sourcing standpoint of view, It's a little bit more cut and dry, I think for metrics and tracking in the other categories. But I feel like when it comes to marketing, it's a little bit tougher. Like the metrics aren't as clear to me as maybe some of the other categories which are inside of it.

Shereen:

So SRM supplier relationship management is something I'm really passionate about because I feel like it's the a one-time you can stop doing your day to day work and focus on something exciting. So the metrics are important. Absolutely. But with marketing, I think you need to focus more on the relationship and account management. More than like performance metrics are really hard to gauge in marketing. Like you need the. Technology to really identify whether the assets you've created are doing as well as they were planned to do. That's a whole nother realm of, uh, metrics, which I think is as hard to get into in SRM for marketing. However, focusing on accountability, responsiveness account teams, that's really key doing three sixties with between the, the, sorry, that's the market. And the agency to ensure that we're both providing each other with the right level of support in order for the brand, the brands of the baby, making sure baby's happy. That's really key. And then the third part of SRM, which is innovation. Is the, is my most is what I find the most exciting because that's when you can bring to the marketers opportunities to think outside the box, they're busy doing their everyday thing. But during these quarterly business reviews or annual reviews, you can spend 10, 20, 30 minutes talking about what is our competition doing? What's new, what are the agencies think that we should be looking at? And so that's, it makes it more fun and not just looking at metrics. So for me, it's those three things.

Dana:

Yeah, I think it's interesting because for the most part, when I focused on SRM within marketing, a lot of the times when I try to compare notes with other people in different categories, it's really tough because like you said, it's very hard sometimes to measure, are those assets really doing what we need them to do? Yes. You can do like clicks per CBM. And there are all those things, but I think. Still the measurement of, can we somehow track that to increase revenue? And can we somehow relay that? And I think everybody's trying to do it, but I think I haven't, I personally haven't seen it done well, and it's just been a struggle wherever I've gone to be able to say yes, because of his website or yes, because of this marketing campaign, we were able to see X amount in revenue because they have so many campaigns and so many things going on, but I do like the idea. Yes, QBR was, can bring that innovative strategy. And I think a lot of times agencies just feel like it's every day we're doing the run of the mill and that they don't get to bring forth their ideas. And I think. Something that they need to do more of. And I know a lot of my business partners say, we want you to give us ideas and we want you to be thought leaders, the brand just as well as we do. And so I think you're right. The QBR gives them that chance to say, Hey, we've thought about this. What do you guys think about it? Or at least bring out those opportunities for them to stretch what they would normally do for you at a pharmaceutical or. Wherever it is. I think it's a great way to be able to bring that in. But have you seen, I know I have, now that you're global, have you seen that some of you were QPRs are like therapy sessions between multiple regions. If you add that,

Shereen:

tend to focus the QPRs on the, um, they're not global. KBRs. What we try to do is the largest account team. Usually it's the us spend and the global teams representatives come in and we talk about how those relationships are going. Cause like we have a global agency and they have representatives globally for our office and for our affiliates. How are those relationships working? How are we disseminating global strategies to the affiliates? The U S is just, is another. The largest one, but still. So we look at it from that angle and we try to maintain the, stay close the agenda, where it doesn't turn into people just venting. And so we try to capture back on the 360, we try to react to that and only share that 360 feedback to certain levels of leadership. So they can take that back and not put people on the spot. The other aspect of you'd mentioned the number of clicks and trying to tie that back to revenue. I've actually tried to do that at a self. Massively hard because not only are there many strategies and campaigns that are being deployed, we also have different factors in the environment that could be affecting revenue that have nothing to do with this. It's almost not fair to come back and say, this campaign didn't do this well. And our marketers are already getting that sort of data on how campaigns are doing on their, in their day to day with the agency. So separating. And then focusing on the account level leadership and overall performance and responsiveness is something that I've seen has been useful.

Dana:

You guys use any tool or a technology? I know we don't have anything specific. I've used survey monkey in the past and been that third party intermediary. You want to talk about what you use, if it is survey monkey or something else, and how you manage that.

Shereen:

Sure. Yeah. We use a tool called V I Z I B L knowing at the end. And it's been, it's been really useful because we can upload information around who the account teams are, who are the brand team, supporting them, what type of relationship they have. So we call them circles. So there's the, this, the senior leader circle, there's the day to day. And then there's maybe the accounting team, for example. So they're all labeled in there and then you can do surveys by. You can do KPIs by circle and, and those three sixties are also part of the tool. So we really like.

Dana:

That's really cool. I know that there's tools out there. I just haven't really had access to them. So it's good to hear something out there that you think is a good tool, too, that we could potentially look into and see, I know there's a lot of different things on the direct side for management, but indirect and specifically it's tends to be just a little bit different, just enough to throw you.

Rusty:

So before we wrap up, what advice would you give to somebody who is just now starting out or considering getting into marketing procurement?

Shereen:

One thing I've learned is that you don't want to go into your job into your marketing procurement job with an agenda, with a savings agenda. You don't want to do that because that is you are a support. You are a support function. You're there to enable the marketing team to be succeed. If you go in with that mindset, the savings will come. Think about how you can bring efficiencies, how you can help make help extend their budget so they can do more with less go in with that mindset.

Rusty:

Great advice. Dana, anything else you want to throw in there before we put it on?

Dana:

No, I really do appreciate you coming on and touching base with us and giving us all the good insight, because I think you really do have a great perspective given all your experience.

Shereen:

Thank you. Thank you both for having me today. It was really a pleasure to be here and love to be on again in the future.