Three Denali Group Executives Honored as 2015 “Pros to Know” by SDCE Magazine

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - March 10, 2015 - PRLog -- Three Denali Group executives have tapped as 2015 “Pros to Know” award winners by Supply & Demand Chain Executive magazine. They include Marrena Anderson, Director of Denali Recruiting and Staffing; T. Grant Dearborn, Vice President of Denali Consulting; and Lauren Gallagher, Director of Operations for Denali Group’s Pittsburgh Service Delivery Center.

Over the past 15 years, SDCE’s annual “Pros to Know” awards recognize supply chain executives and manufacturing and non-manufacturing enterprises leading initiatives to help prepare their companies’ supply chains for the significant challenges of today’s business climate.

Marrena Anderson's commitment to delivering industry-leading talent to build the nation's top-performing supply chain organizations earned her a “Provider Pro to Know” award. Marrena spearheads Denali Group's Recruiting and Staffing division (DRS), where she seeks and develops client partnerships, provides business oversight, and leads operations for recruiting and staffing. Through DRS, Marrena partners with organizations to improve their acquisition of supply chain talent.

“To better align the supply chain function within a company's broader strategy, the procurement organization needs to understand—and share the desire to achieve—the company's vision and goals,” said Anderson. “Strategies must align with stakeholder priorities. Particularly in this era of globalization, supply chain organizations cannot exist solely as a tactical procurement function. They must be capable of formulating complex sourcing strategies. It is imperative to have the right people and talent in place—at every level of the procurement organization—to strategically manage evolving change.”

T. Grant Dearborn’s dedication to procurement transformation makes him a “Provider Pro to Know.” As a member of executive leadership at Denali, Grant leads medium to large businesses on their journey toward achieving procurement success. He is currently leading the deployment of Denali Technology Services and PureSpend™, which offers procurement organizations undergoing transformation an approach that focuses on technology evolution.

“As high-speed innovation makes our business world smaller, visibility and transparency to an organization’s supply chain plays an increasingly important role in the overall success of company strategy,” said Dearborn. “The competitive margin of error is extremely thin in today’s global supply chain, where multiple competitors are waiting for an opportunity to replace another. This puts greater pressure and on supply chain management by allowing them more influence. In order to better react to the needs and changes of the market, business leaders must have access to the best intelligence on the market. Therefore, procurement needs to take a lead role in providing decision makers and key stakeholders with the best data and information that can drive effective decision-making. To achieve this and to position itself as the trusted source for market and supply strategy, procurement must acquire the means for high-speed data and information processing.”

Lauren Gallagher believes that a key challenge facing customers today is the emphasis to continuously drive savings. Each year organizations need to find new methods, new products, and new suppliers that allow them to deliver incremental savings. Gallagher, however, is working with a client who is moving to allow only implemented savings as a part of the procurement savings goals. This is a shift from previous years, when preventive/cost-avoidance savings were a part of annual targets clients gave their procurement organizations. Her goal is to build their pipeline to show enough projects to account for 150 percent of their 2015 savings goal via focused category summits. In these global summits with key stakeholders, they are diving into historical spend in greater detail and conducting more in-depth supplier analyses to ensure that the client’s status quo is challenged. This is a significant shift, as much of previous behaviors resulted from relationship-based awards with repetitive incumbents that do not stray outside client comfort levels. Lauren has been working with her team to increase confidence and push boundaries from what has been done to what can be done. This endeavor to achieve realized savings sooner will drive rapid improvements to the clients’ bottom line.

“There is an ongoing transition from identified to realized savings, which necessitates driving stakeholders to complete more strategic activity earlier in the year to ensure that savings can be implemented within a client’s calendar year,” said Gallagher.  “Ultimately, all of these points drive to a much more efficient management of a client’s spend and provides the backbone for knowledgeable procurement and compliance within all facets of an organization.”