CM GROUP
“ The start of my journey involved figuring out what procurement was and what it meant for an organisation . My next task was establishing how I could make an impact and create centralised procurement at the company I was working with at the time . Once I had that worked out , I moved on to another company ” KAREN HODSON CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER , CM GROUP
EXECUTIVE BIO
KAREN HODSON
TITLE : CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER
INDUSTRY : INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES
LOCATION : UNITED STATES
Karen received a B . A . in Economics and Minor in Communications from Seton Hall University and her M . A . in Organisational Management from George Washington University . Karen has over 20 years of experience in operations , procurement and real estate management . She started her procurement career at a tech startup and has gained knowledge and experience building centralised procurement at 4 other companies since . She is a skilled negotiator and has an average savings of 20 % on vendor contracts . Along with managing procurement , she also manages CM Group ’ s Real Estate portfolio , as well as corporate insurance and the corporate travel program . to figure out first what made sense for the company and secondly how to implement it across the entirety of the organisation .” Hodson implemented Zip to manage the purchasing request process across the CM Group .
Hodson is keen to speak further about the centralised system . “ Having centralised procurement allows the organisation to get an overall broad view of what is happening on the purchasing side of the business . I facilitate different departments coming together to have a conversation . For example , sales may have a need and not realise that the marketing department has a tool in place already that the procurementmag . com 117