from London England it's the cube covering Koopa inspire 19 emia taught to you by Koopa hey welcome to the cube Lisa Martin coming to you from London I'm at Koopa inspire 19 pleased to be joined by one of Koopas spent setters hit me here is alla Williams the managing director and chief procurement officer at Barclays al welcome to the cube Thank You Lisa thanks for having me so Barclays is a three hundred plus year old Bank three hundred and thirty five years I think I also was was headquartered in London I didn't know this until he did some research Barclays is the pioneer of the ATM yes and a credit card in the UK credit card why first credit card in the UK and the pioneer in inventor of the ATM correct yes so when we think of an organization that is three hundred and thirty five years old we think how agile is that organization how transformative can it be talk to me about what it's like at Barclays from a digital perspective before we get into some of the procurement stuff which or not but tight and culture like that's a great question right could you think about a three hundred thirty-five year old Bank how innovative could it can it be right how agile can it be and the market in the the sector we work in requires us to be very agile because banking is a disrupted sector especially on the retail and consumer side expectations around technology and mobile capabilities and digital transformation are the most significant they've ever been in this sector and so for Barclays it's it's absolutely key that we deliver on those capabilities both in terms of our front office for our consumers and our corporate clients as well as for our own employees within the bank how influential is the consumer side because as consumers we are so used to being able to get anything that we want we can buy products and services we can pay bills with a click or swipe on the on the business side it's harder for businesses to transform and innovate it's a lot of other risks and security issues how influential is Barclays Barclays is your retail your consumer business in terms of your b2b work and that's a great question because I think the the experiences that shape people's expectations come from their interactions in retail and consumer when it comes to b2b and traditionally business-to-business commerce and financial transactions haven't been nearly as sophisticated streamlined or frictionless you know as you would in a consumer model so the expectations are built on the consumer side in consumer to business type models and then the business and business models been playing catch-up for the last several years as a result talk to me about now the role of finance leaders I was reading surgery that Kupa did recently have 253 uk-based financial decision makers and a big number of them I think it was 96 percent said we don't have complete visibility of all of our spent there's a big opportunity there to work with a company like Cooper but talk to me about how the role of the chief procurement officer is changing you've been doing it for quite a while you're a veteran right some of the trends that you have seen that you've really jumped on and said this is the direction we need to be going in right so I've been the chief procurement officer of Barclays for two and half years and the CEO of a large global technology company for nine years before that so I think the the the role of the chief procurement officer has changed significantly over the course of the last say 10 years five years two years we're at a point now where the chief procurement officer is seen as a source of and the organization of procurement is seen as a source of innovation it's seen as a source of capacity creation for the the the organization for the company and it's also seen as sort of a steward of the portfolio of spins for that particular organization to ensure we're maximizing the utility and value of that spend and of that supply chain so the expectations for procurement have tripled quadrupled or more fold in the last you know four or five years some of the interesting things that we're hearing from Koopa and from their customers and partners today is beyond simply initiative to simply but beyond you know dramatically improving procurement and invoicing and dispensing and leveraging the platform as one source for visibility of all that spent but it's being transformative to completely other areas like I was hearing a story of a customer who redefined procurement and is actually positively impacting corporate sustainability yes Wow so talk to me a little bit about I know one of the things that you really thrive on is competition how are you leveraging that and maybe your old American football days to build and maybe foster a sense of collaborative competition within your team to transform procurement at Barclays yes so I think that whether it's in sport or whether it's in business I think the concept of teams is key and effective teams are built on trust they're built on empowerment they they're built on collaboration open communication limited asymmetry and information as it's passed and that's all about kind of driving agility for whether you're on this on the football field American footballer or other football or on or in a business environment of business context so you know it's really and as a CEO and for all of the leaders on my team it's also about being a player coach and knowing when you need to be a player when you need to sort of roll up sleeves contribute in a particular area or particular solving a particular problem but more importantly when you need to be coached and and help those players sort of and those team members in on the team sort of step up to the challenge and coach them to be more success see Bennet Berkeley's a couple years now talk to me about your use case the purpose has with Koopa what are you guys doing together and what are some of the transformations that both internally and externally you've been able to achieve yeah so the relationship with coop has been great again I joined to make a couple of years ago one of the sort of first pillars associated with our overall transformation journey of centralizing procurement from five different procurement or six different procurement organizations really to moving to strategic locations to building out a new organization structure and operating model for for procurement I won't go into all that but one of the key pillars was around technology and we didn't have a common procure-to-pay or source to pay capability that extended or threaded throughout the bank for managing and supply chain so early on when I joined Barclays partnered partnering with Koopa working both of our teams working very effectively together to deploy sort of country by country and region by region we're now in 11 countries with the Koopa source to pay platform we're going to point to six more by the end of this calendar year and over 95% of our spend is flowing through Koopa as a multinational banks so it's been a significant component of our overall transformation journey for for Barclays and part of that transformation journey the technology piece is important that all a lot of its cultural we talked about a history of a three hundred and thirty-five year old organization but also going from five different procurement organizations down to one using a central platform that's challenging to get folks on board right being comfortable with change is your spirit of competitiveness was that a facilitator of getting adoption so that you could get them well I think so I mean I think to get the most out of teams and the most out of any organization large or small you need to galvanize around a common set of goals and objectives the the adage we ought to be pulling on the rope together to achieve achieve the end result and I think in the case of the sort of our Koopa journey both in terms of its strategy and overall deployment it was something more or less our entire procurement organization was able able to galvanize around and in feel like they were a part of and it it created an identity for us within Barclays as a procurement organization as well and kind of put his front and center with our business units and our stakeholders in a way we had we'd never been before so in terms of procurement having a seat at the board table is that something now that you have the ability to do with Barclays and be much more of a strategic driver of business yeah and look at Barclays compared to some of my other experiences it's not an it's not an issue of not having a seat at the table we might have a seat at too many tables sometimes there's a lot of attention on procurement within Barclays to help it deliver on its strategic objectives so with that seat comes a lot of responsibility so I often will coach my teams to ensure that they understand kind of that that that component of it's not just about having a seat at the table it's about what we're going to contribute what are we going to do differently when we're at that table when we're helping shape the decisions for the organization and what are the accountabilities and responsibilities that will pick up as a result and deliver on those promises that's absolutely critical one of the things that was talked about this morning is to trust Rob Bernstein talked about it they also had a guest speaker Rachel Botsman who's a trusted expert it was such an interesting conversation you know we talked about any chuck event that the cube goes to you always talk about trust got to have trust in the data you gotta have trust in your suppliers but what they were talking about here was really being an enabler of trust but cooper really working to earn the trust of its customers tell me about how has earned your trust and also allowed you to have those better discussions at the board table so that you have marked trusted relationships with your executive and your peer team yeah I mean it all starts for Barclays at the very top of the house in front office because we're in the business of trust I mean Bank a bank is in the business of trust that's what we deliver and promise to our consumers and our corporate clients and I think you know within procurement we need to make sure we're sort of delivering on that same promise around around trust and building trust with our teams and with our suppliers in the case of Kupa frankly it was about asking them to ensure they appropriately set expectations with me with my team in terms of what we could or couldn't do with the capability right don't over promise and under deliver but actually be very prudent and practical about what we're gonna be able to get done and then deliver on those promises to the best of your ability but if something and I always do if something goes so not according to plan right it's be open communicative and direct with the issue and how we're going to address it that to me is how we build trust in any team and that's how we built trust with Kupa through our transformation over the last two years that's critical mister your point no deployment probably ever goes perfectly according to plan there are always things that happen whatever it is software hardware is that we're talking about and I think for companies to address that confront it help the customer through those challenges to me that's more valuable I'm saying everything went beautifully was flawless that's not reality right I completely agree and I think that's that's what separates good from great companies to write is their ability to build that trust whether it be within their supply chain with their clients with their employees and look it's it's a journey it's not something you're one and done and you can say okay we've got the trust you can lose it as easy as you can obtain it and you have to keep a focus on on those trusting relationships should think about that we've earned this trust but we have to focus on it so we don't lose it so we grow X having the focus on that because you're right whether it's a deployment of software it's not one and it's the same thing with any sort of trusted relationship right it's maintaining that it's ensuring that there's value right being delivered on both sides that's right tell me a little bit about your ability Barclays ability as a spend setter in this program that Cooper has to influence technology directions like they talk a lot about the community all the insights that they're able to deliver to the community because of the community as Burton is able to be a strategic her gir with Cooper rather than just a customer yeah Phil we are I mean Rob and his team Raja Ravi the entire crew are very receptive and they're very collaborative in hearing from an organization like Barclays now look I'll be the first to admit Barclays and in banking and banking specifically in the UK it's a different animal than many other companies and sectors that kupo would work in so what might work for other companies doesn't always work for us and kind of flipping that around there's certain things that we need from Koopa that that we've been able to partner with them to deliver over the course of the last two years and the relationship of coop has been fantastic they hear us they listen to us they help us understand what the solution can do what it can't do or won't be able to do in the near term and then how do we augment that in the right way so we don't create cottage industries of activity with Impa cure med when we could be leveraging the capability of ghupat to deliver on those services right so you mentioned a little bit about what's next for you guys in terms of rolling out the deployment a little bit more broadly last question for you is some of the news that came out today with the expansion of Koopa pay with American Express for example and just some of the other innovations that Koopa is making what are some of your thoughts what are some of the things that excite you about the direction are going in well yes so on the Koopa pay front I'm actually going to be on stage with Ravi tomorrow talking about Koopa pay because Mark Lee card is also a key component of that capability for the first virtual card that they integrated probably I believe it was yeah and and so so I think about payments is sort of the one not the only but one of the next frontiers from a source to pay or a procurement perspective and it's about how do we innovate in the payment space to get away from having that through the old traditional methods of adding suppliers you know detailed information to our vendor masters so that we can then eventually get an invoice and then reconcile payment remittance to invoices and sort of work through there's a lot of cost in that a lot of time and very little speed we want to move the dial on speed the value we want to move the dial on efficiencies and eventually get to a point where we can offer things like early payment discounts so by having control over our our payment process and that's where Koopa pay and the Barclaycard partnership with Koopa pay is really played a key role in making that happen so in q1 we made our commitment to deploy Koopa pay in q1 after we're through some of our deployments through the rest of this year on the base of the platform and look forward to continuing that journey next year on the payment side one last thing that just popped up I was doing some research and the b2c side is transformed much faster a lot of demand from the consumers we talked about that a moment ago do you see what the direction could the pay is going in with Barclays card for example as bringing in some of the consumer implements to start facilitating the acceleration that's needed there and I think yes I think that's exactly right because again when you think about the consumer side of payments or use it we're all using our phones we're using other digital means we're using wearables we're using different ways of buying and paying especially in retail and the first question we have to ask ourselves why can't those innovations be applied in a b2b space now kupah pay is I think a start of sort of that journey and certainly not the end you know destination but certainly I think it sets us off in the right direction yeah we as consumers are quite demanding yes I'll thank you for doing you on the cube ensuring the Barclays spends that our success rate good luck tomorrow in your keynote thank you for having me thank you pleasure I'm Lisa Martin you're watching the cube from cuca inspire London 19 thanks for watching

from London England it's the cube covering Koopa inspire 19 Mei brought to you by Koopa hey welcome to the cube Lisa Martin on the ground in London at Koopa inspire 19 very pleased to welcome to the cube for the first time we have Dean Henry the EVP of business financing and supplier management from American Express Dean welcome to the cube thank you happy to be here so let's talk about payments we those of us in our date lives as consumers the b2c transactions are so easy these days right you can transact from your phone from your watch it's we're doing everything we're paying bills we're buying things yet in the b2b space business payments haven't had as rapid as innovation as we seen on the on the consumer side talk to me a little bit about the business-to-business payments industry from MX's perspective before we get in to what you guys are doing with Cooper yeah well first comment on on the innovation you're absolutely right the innovation that's happening and retail payments hasn't made its way to b2b payments I think that's mostly a function of you know a consumer having the ease to try something new download an app and and change the way that they transact a bit at a store but with with whomever they're paying whereas a big business has a lot of processes that drive their their business spend and the way that they manage it and systems and you know as we're here talking with Koopa today you know the the processes that they automate and that they bring are critical to you know making payments happen and because because of that there's just barriers to entry that make make b2b payments harder to mirror the speed that you see in the retail side that said there's a lot of exciting things happening you know b2b payments is a hundred and twenty seven trillion dollar market globally it's a big profit pool that a lot of players are innovating in and when you look into the landscape and you consider who's playing out there you know there's traditional big banks that have been sort of the stalwarts of Global Payments there's obviously a large and grow and growing FinTech community with new companies every day that are in the media offering new capabilities to to clients and then there's players like American Express and I think we're actually uniquely positioned in that landscape with not too many exactly like us and when you look at you know the big banks and some of the challenges that they have when I talk to our customers about fees and and you know processes that take a while or money that moves with with relative uncertainty in terms of how much is actually going to show up and the beneficiaries account based on lifting fees as money moves between banks and then you look at the FinTech community that's new innovative solutions but you're not sure that they're always going to be around you know after the next funding cycle I think we're we're trying to play an in the middle where were a great alternative to the FinTech community we're a global platform for payments we're a global platform for lending so we can really do all the things that a FinTech can do all the things that a bank can do in many instances and and do that with the brand and the certainty that is a max and so we're excited about the space and we're investing a lot of time and energy and and partnering where we need to in order to make sure our customers can transact where they want us to to help them facilitate commerce right that point of enabling a customer to transact where they want what influences are you is the American Express seeing and being able to infuse into your partnerships from the consumer side from that consumer who buy something with a click or a swipe on Amazon and wants to be able to do something similar in their business day job tell me about the influence that American Express is seeing and what that position that you just subscribe is allowing you guys to say all right this is a direction that we're gonna go and because we know yeah I need to meet you mr. customer where you are right what look I think part of it is is demographics to be perfectly honest if you look at Gen Y and Gen Z they're they're more of the decision makers in today's management they will be even more tomorrow's management and so they to your point have that expectation that their business life shouldn't be that much more complex in their personal life so so what we're trying to do is find the partners that have the best user experience and make sure our solutions work seamlessly there that's step one that's that's what we're doing here with Koopa step two is we're also trying to make sure that our capabilities on on Amex a digital real-estate works just it just as easily as our retail side of our business and we're we're doing that you know with a with the unifying principles and American Express which is you know the trust and the service and the brand that that we offer to our clients but then also the the merchant rewards so there's a rich history of of American Express providing a differentiated value proposition with the credit card rewards that that exists and we take take that capability into our our business relationships and make sure that it's a value add to those customers that want it so let's talk about what American Express is doing with Kupa what was it just announced with Koopa pay so yeah Koopa pay you know I was impressed by the stats that Rob put up there they're they're growing quickly and we want to be part of it we're a candidly following the requests of our clients who want American Express as a payment option inside the Koopa pay we offer a tremendous value prop inside of Koopa pay the data that flows with a payment the data that we're able to collect that differentiates us from our competition helps our our clients reconcile their payments eliminate the paper realize the efficiencies that that Koopas clients are excited about and so we're they're simply enabling American Express to be a payment option and my hope and I think Koopas hope is that that's step one of a partnership and and will be able to do more together to serve our collective clients so this is enabling American Express of virtual cards be available as a payment option within Kupa pay yes and what is a virtual card so virtual card is is a virtual credit card number it can be a one-time use or a multi-use okay and you know our our clients use it for several different reasons you know buyers of of goods use a virtual card in order to make the payment of a supplier easier to get more data along with the transaction so that they can reconcile a payment to a purchase order and to associated invoices the suppliers get benefit as well and in that they to get enhanced data to reconcile payment that they receive on their end there's also working capital benefit in that if if a buyer chooses to pay early an invoice we can extend financing and pay the the supplier earlier so that they have more working capital to operate their business and so so it's a real balanced value prop where both parties are realizing value is this going to enable a buyer to have benefits like increased security with the way the virtual card works yeah what increased security and so far as a virtual card isn't is encrypted the fact that you know American Express stands behind all of our card payments with our brand and our promise that differentiates from you know a traditional bank payment you know ACH and other other low value clearings that don't have those guarantees along with it and so so that is a big differentiator but but I think candidly the the biggest benefit our clients see is the enhanced data and the working capital I think that's where we're trying to enrich both sides of the transaction give more data to enable the automation that's happening in the industry and extend credit so that businesses can operate more efficiently and and and by the things that they need to buy and hire the people they need to hire is this also something that will give suppliers and buyers more visibility you talked about enhanced data well they now have more visibility over buyers like different supplier options or suppliers with different ways that they can get paid so certainly enhance visibility on on when a suppliers getting paid and relative to the invoice date and what we're trying to do is work with Koopa and work with our partners around well how do we enhance the data so that so that as you know Koopa talks about the community of suppliers that their buyers utilize how can we be part of that how do we support the buyers and making decisions the suppliers and utilizing American Express as a as a source to be a verified business that has gone through all the legal legal checks that are required in commerce and bringing both of those capabilities to to do a transaction on the Koopa Network one of the stats that Rob mentioned this morning and love stats I really geeked out over them I don't know why you say there's five million plus suppliers on the Koopa platform is that an advantage that American Express sees to help extend the footprint of your virtual cards absolutely I what I'm candidly more excited about is the millions and millions of suppliers that are on the American Express network and that's an asset that I see personally as something that we can work with with Koopa and other partners to bring you know the businesses that are already verified that are on our network that we personally talk to every you know every year and bring those verified profiles to the commerce networks like Koopa so that it's easier to transact on Koopa if you have an American Express card got it and then last question for you is if we look at this partnership what was announced today this is launching in the UK and Australia first and then you'll roll it up more globally can you tell me a little bit about why those two regions yeah one that's going to be available for customers to use so so the honest answer is we wanted to be fast to market and quick and quick out to our customer base the UK and Australia are two very important geographies for us so we're launching first in those places by the end of the year and then looking at rolling out in the US and early 2020 and then from their expanding alongside excellent well Dean thank you for joining me on the cube this afternoon sharing what's new with Amex and Cooper we appreciate your time thank you so much really happy to be here excellent for Dean Henry I'm Lisa Martin you're watching the cube from Cooper inspire London 19 thanks for watching [Laughter]