Dr Elouise Epstein is an long-standing partner at management consulting firm Kearney , a public speaker and an important author on procurement and supply chain
Dr Elouise Eptein is a Partner at Kearney , a futurist and a supply chain and procurement author . Her latest book , about digital procurement , is called ‘ Trade wars , Pandemics , and Chaos ’.
Q . TELL US ABOUT YOUR CURRENT ROLE AT KEARNEY
» I am a Kearney partner based out of San Francisco . I ’ ve worked for the firm for almost 22 years . I am a trusted advisor for clients , helping them set their digital procurement and supply chain strategies . I work across all industries and geographies , and am continually generating new content based on my work with clients . I will not show up with half-baked content from five years ago , platitudes , or buzzwords . I am also a frequent public speaker . Because I am a historian by training my presentations often are equal-part history lesson and supply chain insights , all imbued with my dry wit !
Q . WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A ' FUTURIST ' IN PROCUREMENT ?
» As a futurist , typically I work either with extreme leaders or extreme laggards . Extreme leaders like to embrace a challenge , while extreme laggards look at the extreme leaders and decide they want to scrap everything and leapfrog to the future . These tend to be my clients . The middle-of-the-road clients usually make incremental changes and that ' s fine , but that ' s not the role for a futurist .
In practical terms , I help clients prepare for tomorrow ’ s problems , today . I am continually looking at what threats are coming next and what we need to do to prepare for a disruptive future , because there will be a never-ending set of disruptions facing tomorrow ’ s supply chains . This literally keeps me up at night . “ Chief procurement officers have the unique ability to bring about change because they control - or at least influence - where an enterprise spends its money ” procurementmag . com 23