In Conversation with Vijayanand Choudhury, Global Head – Procurement, at Tata Technologies & member of the Board of Directors, Institute for Supply Management. 

Vijayanand Choudhury

• Vijayanand is the Global Head –Procurement: Tata Technologies. TTL is a Tata Motors company providing engineering, R&D and consulting services to automotive and aerospace industries. 
• He is a Senior Supply Chain Executive with 20 years of experience  in Brand Consulting, Category Management, Procurement Outsourcing and implementation of S2P solutions. Vijayanand has worked with varied industries like IT & ITES, Retail and Manufacturing.  
• Both sales and procurement have evolved over the years, each becoming more specialized. Procurement, which used to be simply an “accounting” job earlier, has now become extremely focused on specific areas. These may be designated as categories, and procurement personnel would be category experts who understand their segment extremely well. 
• Procurement experts are also now desirous of advancing and become C-level executives from within the procurement domain. Similarly, sales have also evolved to cater to specialized needs of the procurement process today. Evolution has happened on two fronts. Firstly, the technology and environment has changed. And secondly, the function and people have evolved. Moreover, procurement experts are now required to understand the supply chain mechanics as well. 
• Procurement and sales have become collaborative and complementary. The vendor must partner with the buyer to solve their needs. In certain situations, this may also need collaboration and integration within the entire supply chain. Since each vendor has in turn a supplier catering to their requirements, the entire chain may have to work in tandem to solve critical bottlenecks in the flow of goods and services.  

These and more insights you never find in the public discourse around Sales and Buying in this candid episode of The Buyer Side Chat.

Run time – 40.26 mins.