In this episode of Impetus Digital‘s Fireside Chat series, I talk to Stephany Lapierre, Founder and CEO of Tealbook. Stephany is a highly coveted supply chain thought-leader, and one of the most influential minds in emerging data technologies. Prior to founding Tealbook, Stephany spent 10 years building a successful strategic sourcing and procurement consulting firm focusing on large-scale sourcing optimization projects. With Tealbook, she has made it her mission is to deliver a ‘Trusted Source of Supplier Data’ to the ever-growing eProcurement space. Currently, Tealbook is the only Big Data company that provides a self-enriching and self-maintaining mechanism to fix enterprise supplier data, forever.
Here is a sneak peek of our conversation:
Q: Can you take us through your voyage and what brought you to Tealbook and where you are today?
A: I started my career in Pharma. I saw a gap when it comes to innovation. When you are owning a brand and you’re looking for innovation, it’s really hard to find. So I started my previous company, Matchbook, with the premise to help brands differentiate themselves through innovation. After this, I realized very quickly that innovation often comes from suppliers, and I developed a process where we would identify business problems and then find the suppliers that could generate better outcomes. At the time, I didn’t really know a lot about procurement. What I saw through this process of finding innovation is that you can really offload a lot of the mechanisms of finding the right providers in order to get the best possible outcome by making sure that you are partnering with the best companies and getting the most value…
Q: What are some of the challenges both pre- and post-COVID of hitting antiquated processes and protocols that technology, including AI, can be used to overcome?
A: You don’t always have visibility into what’s happening with your existing supplier base, let alone your suppliers’ suppliers, where there are a lot of risks as well. It’s important to be able to have access to the information to respond to, to be able to do something about it. So I think what we saw was an accelerated sense of urgency around visibility with data. If you don’t have visibility into your supply base, then you’re not able to take action, you’re not able to be strategic and determine opportunities or areas that you could either consolidate or open to the market. Agility is top of mind.
Q: In regards to digital transformation as it relates to procurement teams within life science companies; what steps would you suggest for teams to follow in order to be able to consolidate a very interoperable system and instead onboard a single digital platform that can be leveraged by them and the rest of the organization?
A: I think the world of procurement is going towards an integrated best-in-breed digital system, and these systems require data. You need to have your data in check before you start integrating a lot of different technologies. For procurement, building a strong data foundation and identify the first immediate win and what you are trying to focus on is key…
You can watch the whole Fireside Chat with Stephany or listen to the podcast version below.
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About Impetus Digital
Impetus Digital is the spark behind sustained healthcare stakeholder communication, collaboration, education, and insight synthesis. Our best-in-class technology and professional services ensure that life science organizations around the world can easily and cost-effectively grow and prosper—from brand or idea discovery to development, commercialization, execution, and beyond—in collaboration with colleagues, customers, healthcare providers, payers, and patients.