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Nancy Nicoll, Vice President of Not for Resale (NFR) for Retail Business Services – the services company of Ahold Delhaize USA – discussed the future of procurement Tuesday during a virtual panel hosted by the Art of Procurement, a weekly podcast for industry professionals. Part of the “Masterminds LIVE” series, the panel brought together procurement experts and leaders to brainstorm next steps for a rapidly changing landscape.

Nancy – along with co-speaker Jaime Robles of Casey's General Stores – discussed whether the traditional category-centric approach was the best way forward for procurement and indirect sourcing teams. Nancy underscored that to be successful, her team needs to be flexible and boil down their scope to areas where they are true experts.

“Right now, we are a category-focused team – meaning I have my team oriented around different areas of spending, which traditionally is an efficient way to drive results,” Nancy said.

But focusing only on category management, she added, “isn’t going to drive the results that are now required of us. I think we have to keep the knife sharp on the fact that our expertise is in sourcing and procurement.”

In the future, Nancy sees procurement proceeding as a hybrid organization – one that is flexible and focused on indirect sourcing and procurement, along with relationship-building, yet still driven by data.

“I think that’s what it’s all about and what we’re all driving towards,” she said.

She also added that the NFR team is successful “because we’re curious – we ask why. When a partner says something, we ask why and go into the market and try to uncover information and find alternative solutions. The status quo is never going to get us where we need to go.”