Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast!

We're continuing our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world.

Today's guest is a former CEO, CPO and published author. She's also an advisory board member to two very rapidly growing startups.
From CPO to Advising Startups - Joanna Martinez from Supply Chain Advisors
Her mission is to help individuals and businesses understand technology, improve processes and align with stakeholders.

That's the Holy Grail, isn't it?

Let's welcome Joanna Martinez to the podcast, and kick off our chat with a quick recap on her background.
Joanna Martinez – A brief background
Joanna is an engineer by profession. She spent the first third of her career in supply chain roles for Johnson and Johnson. It's a very very diversified company that gives a lot of autonomy to its different units.

So this gave her the chance with everything, from a very rigid, rules-based, process-oriented unit to one that was very much like a startup.

This was a great opportunity for learning. And makes great advice for anyone starting their career – pick a company that's going to offer you a broad range of experience.

Joanna did a stint in procurement, and loved it. She decided that she wanted to focus on helping companies that didn't have the kinds of resources that Johnson and Johnson had to create a purchasing organisation: Working for firms where she would either create a procurement organisation, or fix a broken one.

Twice in the subsequent years, she walked into roles that were vacant because the predecessor went out in handcuffs!

That becomes a very interesting stakeholder engagement learning experience.

And it was a fascinating look into how hard it can be to keep track of data when it comes to audits.
The importance of procurement technology
Joanna's last role as a CPO involved a global company with a corporate stand that was very modest, but they had billions of dollars of client spend that they were processing but not really managing.

Technology was really important there. It allowed that company to differentiate itself against the competition. It wasn't the largest supplier in that space. But they could go forward with what they had: Subject matter experts, the right kind of supplier relationships, a platform that clients could use.

Also Joanna had a really good CEO, who was willing to rethink the kinds of agreements he had in place. That was a huge enabler.

In fact, people would say, “What's your most important supplier?” and Joanna would name a technology provider. Having a platform that was easy for clients to understand was hugely helpful. It allowed them to feel comfortable that Joanna was doing a good job on their behalf.
What drives positive disruption?
Joanna wrote a book called A Guide to Positive Disruption. It's about change management and disruption and making sure that change gets adopted within the workplace.