Tension.
At first glance, tension may seem like a negative force, but research shows that short-term stress can actually be beneficial, driving innovation and progress.
In today’s disruptive business world, managing procurement and supply chain complexities can feel stressful.
With the likes of market fluctuations and rapidly changing consumer behaviours to global volatility and regulatory challenges to contend with, every twist and turn presents a new challenge. But what if these tensions were not roadblocks, but pathways to game changing progress? Within every tension lies an opportunity waiting to be harnessed.
Enter InTension.
The rise of InTension
InTension empowers businesses to transform challenges into strategic advantages, turning tension into tensile strength that fuels unprecedented growth and performance. InTension guides businesses through the maze of procurement and supply chain dynamics, uncovering hidden opportunities, strengthening the fabric of their operations, and delivering exceptional financial returns. Leveraging cutting-edge digital tools and proven strategies, InTension equips companies with the insights and capabilities to rapidly make informed decisions, manage risks, and seize opportunities with confidence.
Transformation demands decisive, forward-thinking leadership. InTension empowers companies to quickly navigate past complexities and unlock future opportunities. Transforming organisational culture and performance requires bold, resilient leadership. InTension helps companies untangle the web of past decisions, quickly assess future spending needs and choices, and unlock insights from years of third-party spending to ensure future decisions drive the progress, performance and value needed to support long-range goals.
Tim Herrod is the CEO of InTension. Herrod is a passionate, purpose-driven transformation leader, people builder and results driver. He loves tackling complex problems with great people, inspiring and empowering teams to do difficult and amazing things, continually learning what’s possible and operationalising best practice things, challenging the status quo, and living value creation through customer-centricity and unlocking the full potential of essential partnerships.
Herrod has experience leading multiple successful transformations across procurement, treasury and investor relations in four globally complex, multi-business unit companies. Over more than 25 years, Herrod has delivered $900 million in realised operating cost savings while unlocking significant incremental growth through improvements in profitability, safety, reliability, responsiveness, delivery timeliness and digital innovations. He also has experience presenting to and gaining endorsements from boards of directors and externally communicating transformation results to shareholders in external investor presentations.
“The company name is spelt strangely – but that’s on purpose. InTension means intentional tension,” explains Herrod. “I learnt the hard way and proved my ability to lead in times of difficult change. Transformation is a widely overused term but what it means is dramatic change. My observation was you have to create tension because tension prevents change and almost all of it is coming from humans who are already impacted.
“Before I worked at Albemarle, I thought this was key to helping companies drive change. I came up with this idea around tension, which became intentional tension and how we use it to shift procurement transformations. Our value proposition is that we’ve been in the chair. We want to harness those forces within the procurement ecosystem and get into why decisions are made. We design for the future.”
Navigating AI in procurement
One of the hottest topics in procurement today is generative AI. Go to any conference or meeting, and the draws of chatbots and the efficiency they offer will be on people’s lips. Its potential has taken procurement, and the wider world for that matter, by storm. However, its mere presence doesn’t justify its use—strategic implementation is essential to harnessing its full potential. Herrod believes it is vital to think carefully before adopting new technology without a clear plan.
“I think it’s still too early to make a definitive judgment,” explains Herrod. “It’s extremely important that we understand this issue thoroughly because we have a fiduciary responsibility. There are significant concerns about data security and the accuracy of results. In a world flooded with both real and fake data, it’s crucial to identify and avoid bad data by training AI models. We need to assess how much our team relies on and delivers work based on flawed data.
“While there are many fears, strategically, if we aim to maintain a low-cost, high-performing operating model, we must expedite delivering value to our customers. This means understanding customer needs faster, building efficient operations to meet those needs, ensuring excellence, optimising our supply network, and improving logistics. If competitors are achieving these goals more efficiently using AI, and they’re seeing substantial benefits from focused AI initiatives, every CEO must recognise the responsibility to figure this out.”
Herrod notes that while GenAI introduces new challenges, particularly around internal scepticism and risk, it also presents unparalleled opportunities for those willing to embrace it strategically. “GenAI becomes increasingly efficient with every use, enhancing its ability to drive smarter decision-making and operational success,” he adds. “The ecosystem seems fraught with risks, and internal tensions hinder the adoption of even clearly beneficial technologies. The reality is that AI can be extremely useful and will continue to improve. Therefore, it’s essential to navigate these risks and harness the potential of AI for business success.”
How can graduates benefit from new technology?
A big area of passion for Herrod is education. Having been involved in the space for many years, Herrod also sits on the advisory board of Canada’s representative on the International Federation of Accountants for Professional Accountants in Business. “Talent is one of our most important topics,” he explains. “The biggest challenge in transformation is people. How do we get the right people in the right positions doing the right things and being motivated to do that? My observation is the new core skills, if you want to attract the best, you can’t be doing things the same way as 20 years ago.
“Do you want to give someone a series of pathways in their career that start from a really strong point that is relevant that they can say, ‘Even if I don’t understand procurement, I know that they’re doing it a cool way that I’m going to increase value in me’. The win-win is that I need someone coming in who is open to learning because it’s changing all the time. Today, it’s ChatGPT, tomorrow it could be something else. It’s going to be a commodity in a couple of years. It’s going to be about what you do with it and how you get value out of it.”
Herrod explains he wants procurement to win the best talent because the function is doing interesting work that the next generation of the workforce sees the value in. “I want people to see that the core base of business has this integrated into how we drive world-class repeatable decisions faster,” reveals Herrod.
“Almost everything comes down to the talent agenda which is shifting. After hiring a new intern, the first thing we get them to do is undertake four LinkedIn learning generative AI courses and we talk about new tooling to diagnose tension in clients where we have data sets and we figure out how to build a custom GPT. Ultimately, the fundamentals don’t change, but you could do it better, faster, smarter and design everything for that. It comes down to whether or not you have the talent with the capabilities to change and figure that out or to come in fresh.”
InTension: A closer look
“The way InTension has evolved is with my co-founder Stephany Lapierre, who is well known in procurement circles and continues to focus almost entirely on her supplier data AI/ML startup TealBook. She has rolled her 16-year-old life sciences focused procurement consultancy Matchbook into InTension.
“Stephany brings unmatched digital expertise in AI and ML, along with an extraordinary network and insights that helps elevate client value across industries. This partnership enhances InTension’s capabilities while allowing us to serve Matchbook’s original focus area – life sciences – more comprehensively.”
Forward facing procurement
The exciting reality is that procurement will become significantly more valuable as it shifts its focus toward long-term strategies and business alignment over the next five years. “One of the tensions that I believe happens and why change is difficult is because individuals worry about change and how it’s going to impact them and their families and then they also worry about that for their teams,” he explains. “Good leaders love their teams, they care about their people and change is scary. So, the feeling is ‘I’m going to drag my feet on change because I’m worried about it’. But the reality is the exciting future is a function that’s so much more valuable to the business because it’s focused on the next five years. It’s focused on actually doing the things that enable what the business is trying to do and it’s doing it in a better way.
“If I’m running an operation, I want it to be safe, efficient and world-class that is low-cost and is delivering what the customer wants all day, every day. If I’m in maintenance and I have a supplier not performing, a rubbish widget or an unsafe contractor, no one is helping me with that. I don’t want to be dealing with suppliers or buying stuff. I don’t want to be writing work orders, managing contractors and building kits in the warehouse – I shouldn’t have to do that. But if I don’t have a good partner helping me with that, I’m going to have to.
“You get these procurement functions that are focused on their existence and it’s like we exist to negotiate hard and to get the lowest price and they become increasingly disconnected with where the business is going. Rather than saying in the examples I gave, it’s like what do we need to be worrying about and how do I prevent my business from going off the rails because they weren’t so thinking strategically. The exciting part of the future is a big part of the function is going to be babysat by some individuals in centre of excellence. And most of that is going to be done with automation and AI.
“It’s a really exciting world, but it’s a scary world for the humans in it. And that’s where InTension is going to help because we understand that. You can design for those humans to be able to make this pivot and to be the heroes. Our job is to help these teams be wildly successful and to be the heroes in making that switch, and that’s how they have to think about it.”
