Nick Caller

The prestigious Certification Gold award was presented to Nick Caller, Head of Procurement, Northern Region EMEA North by Ken James, Chief Executive of CIPS.
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Nick Caller, Head of Procurement, EMEA Northern Region Procurement, CSC

"Keith was very keen to pursue the opportunity; it would have been good to have outsourced it at that particular time," says Caller, procurement director for CSC's northern region (UK, the Netherlands and Ireland) based at its European headquarters in Aldershot, near London.
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So how did Caller persuade him that this non-strategic, albeit necessary and customer-facing, service should remain in-house?
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But blocking sub-optimal deals is only one dimension of procurement's influence at CSC; Caller's team, which numbers 28 strategically orientated staff (transaction processing having been moved into a separate shared services centre), is also expected to play a key role in identifying opportunities to manage the business better.
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"Nick and his team know that they have to go beyond price and look for added-value services.
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One practical step Wilman took to ensure this happens was to give Caller a seat on the company's operating board, which has responsibility for day-to-day issues, when he became procurement director three years ago.
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"The relationships we have with the vast majority of our suppliers are now at the CEO level," says Caller.
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Clearly procurement has come a long way in CSC's northern European business under Caller's leadership. He has built up trust and credibility at the CXO level and ensured that "missed opportunities" for the company are kept to a minimum. He has even created a four-day course specifically focused on influencing senior executives. But do he and his team have the degree of influence he would like? "No, we don't," he replies honestly.
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"Keith wants us to be more in the face of his direct-line senior executives, challenging them like he challenges us," says Caller.
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As well as his responsibilities in the northern region, Caller also has a governance role for EMEA as a whole, such that procurement heads in countries such as France and Germany have a dotted reporting line to him. Some early work has been done to share best practices and buy collectively through pan-European deals - as in the case of the single resourcing provider - but this is still at what he describes as the "discovery phase".

Caller and Rimmer accept that in attempting to build a European procurement organisation, the need to overcome a host of business, cultural, political and other differences will really put their influencing skills to the test.
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"We are not going to just go and sell what we've done in the northern region," Caller explains.
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Nick Caller, CSC's procurement director for northern Europe, and his associate director, Lee Rimmer, suggest the following advice for increasing your influence at both the senior management and operational levels:

Nick Caller

Nick Caller | Case study is procurement director, northern Europe region, at Computer Sciences Corporation, based in Aldershot, UK, where he is responsible for an annual spend of $1.3 billion. He joined the company in 1999 and was promoted to lead the 28-strong team in 2003. Previously, Nick spent seven years at Fujitsu and ICL, where he started his career as a trainee management accountant.

It's a measure of the influence procurement director Nick Caller and his 28-strong team now have at board level, and with the CEO, Keith Wilman, and CFO, Martin Coombs, in particular.
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Yet there is plenty of influencing still to do, Caller admits - not least with business unit heads and people at operational levels in the company. Another key challenge in 2007 will be spearheading the creation of a pan-European procurement strategy and organisation.

"Keith was very keen to pursue the opportunity; it would have been good to have outsourced it at that particular time," says Caller, procurement director for CSC's northern region (UK, the Netherlands and Ireland) based at its European headquarters in Aldershot, near London.
...
So how did Caller persuade him that this non-strategic, albeit necessary and customer-facing, service should remain in-house?
...
But blocking sub-optimal deals is only one dimension of procurement's influence at CSC; Caller's team, which numbers 28 strategically orientated staff (transaction processing having been moved into a separate shared services centre), is also expected to play a key role in identifying opportunities to manage the business better.
...
"Nick and his team know that they have to go beyond price and look for added-value services.
...
One practical step Wilman took to ensure this happens was to give Caller a seat on the company's operating board, which has responsibility for day-to-day issues, when he became procurement director three years ago.
...
"The relationships we have with the vast majority of our suppliers are now at the CEO level," says Caller.
...
"Keith wants us to be more in the face of his direct-line senior executives, challenging them like he challenges us," says Caller.
...
As well as his responsibilities in the northern region, Caller also has a governance role for EMEA as a whole, such that procurement heads in countries such as France and Germany have a dotted reporting line to him.Some early work has been done to share best practices and buy collectively through pan-European deals - as in the case of the single resourcing provider - but this is still at what he describes as the "discovery phase".

Caller and Rimmer accept that in attempting to build a European procurement organisation, the need to overcome a host of business, cultural, political and other differences will really put their influencing skills to the test.
...
"We are not going to just go and sell what we've done in the northern region," Caller explains.
...
Nick Caller, CSC's procurement director for northern Europe, and his associate director, Lee Rimmer, suggest the following advice for increasing your influence at both the senior management and operational levels: