After gaining ten years of practical experience as a global procurement manager with Intel Corporation, including two two-year Intel international expatriate assignments in Asia and Latin America, where he was responsible for driving strategic sourcing strategies and mitigating risks tied to business continuity disruption or materials operations disruption, Damon De La Pena struck out on his own. Today, Damon owns BDM Consulting with fellow former Intel colleague Richard Brady.
BDM Consulting provides very focused services in five key areas. The first area, supply chain lean assessment, is focused on helping companies identify gaps in their supply chain operations that can be bridged by leveraging technology solutions. Damon De La Pena was quick to point out that BDM Consulting is not a technology company, but rather a "knowledge company" that provides the experience, assessment and analysis needed to identify potential solutions. "One of my key learnings as a consultant," Damon said, "has been that you can't know everything, so you build a team of business partners around you who can provide resources like technology solutions."
The second and third areas of BDM Consulting involve strategic sourcing and supplier management. In Damon's experience many US and international companies are overly focused on the transactional side of procurement. In other words, accepting the requisition and making the purchase on behalf of their clients. "What we try to do," Damon explained, " is coach our clients to source strategically -- to gather internal and external data on different commodities, and then craft a strategic sourcing plan." This, he says, allows companies to consolidate their spends and to reduce their supply base, which in turn allows them to focus, strategically, on core suppliers that typically make up 80% or more of most company's spends. "It is a very different skill set than simply executing a purchase," Damon says, "you have to have people who can set strategy, interface with internal stakeholders, and then negotiate by consolidating the spends into these larger contracts."
