Heading to DPW

Vlogs, thoughts, and updates on the best-tech conference in Procurement

It's Tuesday, 8th October, and I'm sitting in the finest of Great Britain's establishments: the legendary Wetherspoon.

I don't usually do this, but I'm waiting for my flight to Amsterdam in the next hour. I've got some time to kill, so I thought I'd best bring you along on the DPW journey.

On that note, I'm actually recording some video content during and around the event, so make sure you're subscribed to both the World of Procurement and Gatekeeper YouTube channels so you can see it.

I appreciate that it can be costly for many, and not everyone's employers will pay for it.

For me, I'm going as a vendor (aka the Dark Side in Procurement - damn, I missed an opportunity to pose in my Darth Vader replica helmet).

As many of you know, I'm the Head of Product Marketing at Gatekeeper, the Vendor & Contract Lifecycle Management (VCLM) platform. This platform, which unifies vendors, contracts, and TPRM, is more than just a product to me. It's why I joined Gatekeeper, when I was leading Contract Management at 10x Banking after bringing the platform into that organisation with the wider procurement team.

A life-changing event in many ways for me.

And I'm at the event with Gatekeeper, and I'm genuinely excited to show what we're doing and to go nerd out with some of my peers in the procurement tech space. It's no secret that we have a lot of tech options at the moment. THIS IS GOOD. I see certain people posting content fear-mongering about the sheer volume and the difficulties it brings. I look at this differently.

I see this as the making of procurement tech. If we didn't have such a competitive environment, our tech would absolutely suck still. And you now have so many options from a platform-based approach, such as Gatekeeper, to best-of-breed. I see pros and cons to both depending on your set-up. I'm convinced for many the platform-based approach is simpler in many ways so long as you can integrate widely.

Anyway, that's my rambles for now. I'll drive and give you multiple updates this week, my friends.

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