Bristol Myers Squibb lets staff buy directly as procurement shifts from gatekeeper to guide

Bristol Myers Squibb is rethinking one of procurement’s oldest assumptions: that the function should sit between employees and the act of buying itself.

At the centre of the shift is Paula Glickenhaus, the pharmaceutical group’s chief procurement officer, who said on a panel at Amazon Business’ Reshape conference that the company is allowing staff to place certain orders directly through Amazon’s business-to-business purchasing platform rather than sending every transac...

The aim, she said, is to shorten the time it takes employees to obtain what they need, particularly in a research-driven organisation where delays can slow experiments and, ultimately, affect patients. When she joined BMS three years ago, Glickenhaus said, the company’s finance chief asked why buying a simple item could take so long and why it could not simply be done through Amazon. Another senior executive, she said, described the process as a “procurement pregnancy”, because contract closure could take more than eight months.

That frustration appears to have helped accelerate a broader rethink. Rather than positioning procurement as the gatekeeper for every purchase, Glickenhaus argued that the function should concentrate on policy, controls and supplier strategy, while allowing the business to handle routine buying itself. In her view, procurement adds the most value when it is closer to the line of revenue and the needs of end users, not when it is absorbed in administrative processing.

Under the new model, employees place orders directly on Amazon Business, but procurement still sets the rules. The team defines spending policies, approval thresholds and controls, which are then embedded in the platform. That arrangement allows the company to keep oversight while reducing friction for staff who need to buy quickly.

Glickenhaus said the biggest internal challenge was not technical but cultural. Her own team initially resisted the move, she said, because it raised obvious questions about the future shape of the function. She addressed that resistance directly, telling colleagues that procurement, like human resources and legal, is likely to be reshaped by technology and artificial intelligence. Her message, she suggested, was that the best defence against disruption is to lead it.

She also framed the change as a career issue rather than just a cost exercise, telling her team that some roles might disappear but that the experience they gained through the transition would strengthen their prospects elsewhere. That argument, she said, helped secure support by presenting the shift as a way to make procurement professionals more commercially relevant, rather than less important.

The move sits alongside BMS’s broader emphasis on supplier relationships. On its own website, the company says it works with suppliers to discover, develop and deliver medicines, while also stressing value, innovation, responsible sourcing and sustainability. That suggests the company is not abandoning procurement so much as narrowing its focus: less transaction handling, more strategic engagement.

For a company whose work is measured in clinical progress rather than purchase orders, the message is clear. Speed matters, bureaucracy has a cost, and procurement’s role may increasingly be to enable rather than to obstruct.

Source: Noah Wire Services