About the Conference

Blue Ocean Academy, the region’s largest knowledge empowerment enterprise presented its 5th International Procurement & Supply Chain Conference, IPSC 2016 on 12th November 2016 at Al Faisaliah Hotel, Riyadh, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia – a gathering of eminent logistics and supply chain thought leaders who think globally but act locally. Excellence in Supply Chain means moving beyond costs and creating better products with minimum damage to the environment. Built on the theme of – “Aligning Procurement & Supply Chain with Business Delivery”, the conference focussed on 4 tracks, Technology & Innovation, Strategy & Supply Chain Excellence, Leadership and Sustainable Supply Chain.

After a successful series of conferences in UAE and Qatar, IPSC 2016 geared up for the KSA edition. Attracting a very targeted audience for the participating companies, IPSC conference is a strong platform for increasing your distribution network, strengthening business relationship and sharing industry developments. Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a vast land covering more than 2 million square km and with a substantial mining and heavy industry sector, Supply Chain and logistics have a fundamental role to play in Saudi Arabia’s current and future economic success. Saudi Arabia is the second in the Emerging Markets Logistics Index (As placed by Agility Logistics), behind only China and replacing Brazil at the top of the table.

The conference brought together heads of Supply Chain and Procurement and important policy-makers from more than 500 companies from the Middle East and KSA in particular who have played a crucial role in transforming KSA into the leading supply Chain hub. No matter how efficient your supply chain is, there is always room for improvement. Often, the day-to-day challenges of managing people, systems and operations leaves little time to keep informed on the latest technology and innovation coming onto the market. You need access to this information to run your supply chain as efficiently as possible.

The true value of IPSC 2016 Riyadh was that it presented a boiling pot of information, ideas and solutions, pulling together over 800 of the industry’s most influential executives and almost all of the industry’s leading solution providers to push the boundaries of procurement & supply chain excellence.

WHo Should attend
CEOs, CIOs, COOsCEOs, CIOs, COOs	Purchasing/Procurement Heads
Supply Chain Heads	VP of Procurement/ Purchasing/ Sourcing/ Supply Chain
Procurement Director	Purchasing Director
Sourcing Director	Purchasing Managers
General Managers and Managing Directors	E-Procurement Service Providers
Senior Buyer	Commodity Manager

Sheraton Doha Resort

Emirates Palace Hotel

Atlantis The Palm

Key Note Topics

Technology & Innovation

Which disruptive technologies will impact your industry and supply chain? How can supply chain leaders sort through emerging technologies to find meaningful trends early and avoid dead ends? What is currently affecting core supply chain processes and how are they changing?

Latest technological know-hows to fit with procurement processes
Cyber security: protecting your processes
Harnessing big data to unlock business insights
Understanding Supplier Enabled Innovation
Driving Next-Generation Innovations: Improve the productivity
Internet of Things (the impact on procurement)
Social Media for Procurement
e-Invoicing and Procure-to-Pay
Mobile-Enabled Procurement / Multi-Device

Strategy & Supply Chain Excellence

Supply chains encompass the end-to-end flow of information, products, and money. For that reason, the way they are managed strongly affects an organization's competitiveness in such areas as product cost, working capital requirements, speed to market, and service perception, among others. In this context, the proper alignment of the supply chain & Procurement with business strategy is essential to ensure a high level of business performance . What competences must be built to meet a competitive threat or seize an opportunity? How can supply chain choices in terms of network design, organizational structure or metrics affect the pace of innovation and its business impact? Supply chain excellence is easier to say than to measure. For a supply chain leader having a clear definition is the starting point to drive improvement. Without clarity it is very difficult to define an effective operating strategy.

Effective contract management strategies: increasing procurement value and cost savings
Driving procurement function to the strategic level
Delivering Procurement Excellence through Strategic Sourcing and Performance Optimisation
Building a successful category strategy that looks beyond traditional procurement
Driving competitive advantage through third party critical collaborations
Delivering savings and driving benefits in a merger process
Social Media for Procurement
e-Invoicing and Procure-to-Pay
Building sustainability into supply chains through eprocurement
Improving business excellence for end-to-end supply chain operations
Identifying gaps in current programs which prevent excellence in service, costs, safety, quality, and asset management
Establish an ongoing measurement tool to gauge progress on the journey to drive excellence
Conquer common supply challenges
Improve customer satisfaction and boost ROI

Leadership

Behind every supply chain decisions or improvement actions there is human action or decision. And because of this, you need to have a clear people management and leadership function to support supply chain improvement projects and operations:

Succession Planning How to Develop the Future Leader
Redefine Procurement to Become a Driver of Absolute Profit Growth
Building a smarter procurement function: contributing to top-line growth
CSR and Redefining Supply Chain Leadership
Maturing procurement and sourcing governance models
Agile = The New Lean
Transforming the Supply Chain Organization of the Future
The Importance of Direct Materials from a C-level Perspective

Sustainable Supply Chain

The objective of supply chain sustainability is to create, protect and grow long-term environmental, social and economic value for all stakeholders involved in bringing products and services to market.

Sustainability in operations and supply chains
Tools for sustainable supply chain design, management, and performance measurement
Sustainability and risk mitigation strategies
Operations research for sustainability
Sustainability issues in manufacturing, services, logistics, and freight transportation
Leanness and supply chain sustainability
Sustainable supplier evaluation and selection
Supply chain carbon footprint measurement
Carbon labelling in supply chains
Performance measures, metrics, and impact of sustainable businesses
Green logistics, 3rd party logistics, reverse logistics and closed loop supply chains
Waste management
Green Procurement

Conference Hightlights

Procurement & Supply Chain experts from the world over will attend the conference, presenting papers sharing their knowledge and expertise.

Unique opportunity to be a part of an unique procurement & supply chain “think tank” who will set the agenda for future IPSC conferences and startups.

Excellent platform
to learn, network, share expertise & win 2016 procurement leadership awards.

Enjoy the
‘power lunch’ on November 12th, 2016 at the f conference venue

Delegates Profile

CEOs, CIOs, COOs

Purchasing/Procurement Heads

Supply Chain Heads

Procurement/Purchasing/ Sourcing/ Supply Chain VPs

General Managers and Managing Directors

Procurement/Purchasing/Sourcing Directors

Purchasing Managers

E-Procurement Service Providers

Senior Buyers

Advisory board

Key Speakers

Panel Discussions

Listen, Learn & Grow

THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF SUPPLIER DIVERSITY

How can giving access to opportunity for smaller companies Align with your business goals and priorities?

How do you ensure the supplier is the right fit?

Making under-used suppliers part of the procurement process

OPERATING IN A DIGITAL ECONOMY: THE IMPACT OF REAL TIME INFORMATION ON PROCUREMENT

Does procurement need a digital strategy?

How do you ensure the supplier is the right fit?

Improving procurement intelligence: visualising data to optimise the outcome

Harnessing digital technology within the procurement context

MAKING THE DIGITAL & DATA DISRUPTION WORK FOR YOU

Why cloud computing and big data are game-changers

How leading businesses improve performance with data

Future technology trends that will impact procurement

BUSINESS ECOSYSTEMS / SOLUTION-CENTRIC SUPPLY CHAINS
This panel of leading supply chain experts will provide insight into the issues and opportunities that they face as "solutions orchestrators" in working across ecosystems of business partners to create customer value and support growth for all organizations involved.

LOW-CARBON SUPPLY CHAIN / NETWORK DESIGN
Low-carbon economy has become a strategic focus for countries, business and individuals. Companies, as important constituents of society, play a vital role to reduce carbon emissions. For companies controlling the carbon emissions is not only in pure transportation or production systems, but also at a supply chain/network level, which is more complex and challenging. It necessitates the re-design of the supply chain/network in order to achieve a truly coordinated low-carbon supply chain system. As a result, many related research questions have been proposed in relation to how to promote and achieve successful low-carbon supply chain management.

Conference Videos

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