Focal Point : Pioneering Procurement Orchestration
We speak to Anders Lillevik , CEO and Founder of Focal Point on ways the company is simplifying complex procurement processes through orchestration
Anders Lillevik is CEO and Founder of Focal Point . Established just over four years ago , Anders has helped the company achieve rapid growth , leveraging his 25 + years of experience in the procurement space , and as a former Chief Procurement Officer for several large-scale organisations .
It was time spent as head of procurement at these large organisations that inspired Anders to found Focal Point .
“ Despite the high costs of implementing procurement tech , the challenge was always in sourcing – particularly when it came to supplier management – which typically relied on the worker using Excel ,” he says .
“ Working this way , it was hard to manage at scale at these large-scale organisations . That ’ s why I started Focal Point , to create a solution where procurement activities can be effectively tracked , big or small , whether that ’ s a complex request for proposal ( RFP ) to a contract renewal . With Focal Point , you know what ’ s being done and who ’ s doing it .”
The principles of procurement orchestration
At Focal Point , there are several guiding principles for effective procurement orchestration . The first is the need to normalise and consume data ; the second is to have data work across conditional and contextual workflows – with consumed data needing to be centralised and viewable .
Thirdly , automation can occur , because everything related to a particular supplier or stakeholder is displayed in a singular view .
“ We have a platform that sits on top of existing infrastructure that performs many roles in addition to normalising and centralising data ,” says Anders .
“ It allows users to see a supplier ’ s open POs , contracts , invoices and risk categories in one convenient location .”
A Coupa App Marketplace certified partner
The success of Focal Point has seen it become a Coupa App Marketplace certified partner . Today , it has two Coupa relationships , recently partnering with Coupa to help deliver project management and procurement operations around tracking , savings and cycle times .