SMBC GROUP
All things procurement with Frank Wadsworth Managing Director and Chief Procurement Officer, Americas Division at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
Frank Wadsworth is a Managing Director and Chief Procurement Officer for the Americas Division at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation( SMBC). Frank has spent his career in financial services, having worked at some of the biggest names in banking: Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Bloomberg, and now at SMBC. Beginning his career in technology, Wadsworth gradually transitioned to assume a variety of vendor management leadership roles. Prior to joining SMBC, he led global supply chain operations for Bloomberg, while also establishing a third-party risk management programme for the firm, transforming a fragmented, reactive approach into a cohesive one. This role at Bloomberg was preceded by a position leading strategic vendor management for J. P. Morgan’ s Investment Banking Division( IBD), as well as Procurement Professional Services for the bank globally, with several billion dollars of spend under management.
Wadsworth’ s experience includes responsibility for driving multi-milliondollar savings, improving process efficiencies, and reducing risk by identifying and establishing outsourcing, offshoring, and shared services opportunities.
As Chief Procurement Officer for SMBC, Wadsworth is leading the development and implementation of a multi-year target operating model for the organisation to provide a centralised, strategic, and valuedriven procurement function that will foster the timely delivery of quality goods and services to the business.
“ After finalising our target operating model towards the end of 2020, we hit the ground running in 2021, growing the procurement team, successfully implementing the Coupa platform, and standing up procurement operations for four of nine of our group companies,” says Wadsworth.“ We are roughly one-year old as a procurement organisation following our first implementation, and I’ m proud to say we’ ve accomplished a significant amount in a short period of time.
“ We’ ve onboarded more than 1,000 suppliers with 75 % of supplier invoices processed electronically – a significant paradigm shift from one year
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