Procurement with Purpose: How Amit Das Is Strengthening Care, Continuity, and Strategic Value at VMCH
In mission-driven organisations, procurement carries a responsibility that extends well beyond cost and contract management. It must safeguard continuity, support frontline teams, and ensure that every commercial decision contributes to safe, reliable, and compassionate service delivery. At VMCH, where aged care, disability services, and community support sit at the heart of the organisation’s work, procurement plays a vital role in protecting both operational resilience and care outcomes.
Amit Das, Senior Procurement Manager at VMCH, brings a broad background spanning technology, government, and healthcare. That mix of experience has shaped a procurement leadership style grounded in governance, stakeholder engagement, and practical value creation. In this interview, Das reflects on his journey into procurement, the evolution of VMCH’s function, and the strategies required to balance cost, resilience, sustainability, and service quality in one of Australia’s most important and fast-growing sectors.
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Career Journey: You’ve built your career in procurement across a mix of local government, technology, through to healthcare and aged-care sector. Can you share your career journey and what led you to your current role as Senior Procurement Manager at VMCH? What experiences have most shaped your approach to procurement leadership in a mission-driven organisation?
Like many people in procurement, I did not begin my career intending to enter the profession. I started as a Sales Graduate at IBM after completing a Master of Business Systems at Monash University. It quickly became clear that sales was not the right fit for me, but the experience taught me something that has stayed with me throughout my career: the importance of empathy. Even now, while I cannot respond to every supplier approach, I try to ensure that no supplier is treated without respect because I understand how difficult it can be on the other side of the conversation.
From a professional perspective, IBM gave me the strongest possible foundation in procurement. It is an organisation that does procurement well, and the leaders I worked with there instilled disciplines and principles that still guide me today. Later, my time at the Department of Education reinforced the importance of governance, probity, and a strong procurement framework. I was again fortunate to work under leaders who valued fairness, honesty, and kindness, and who showed me that introversion can be a strength in leadership rather than a weakness.
Today, at VMCH, I draw on all of those experiences in a diverse, mission-focused environment. Working in aged care has broadened my perspective further and reinforced that procurement leadership is not just about commercial outcomes. It is about listening well, understanding context, and supporting services that directly affect people’s lives.
Procurement Supporting Quality Care: VMCH delivers critical health, aged-care and community services across Australia. How does procurement support VMCH’s commitment to providing high-quality care, safe facilities, and reliable service delivery for residents and patients?
At VMCH, procurement supports quality care by ensuring that the most critical goods and services are managed proactively and reliably. In our environment, continuity of supply is essential. If key products or services are interrupted, the impact is not limited to operations alone, it can directly affect the wellbeing of residents, clients, and the staff who support them every day.
One of our strengths is that the procurement team understands which categories are most critical and where close management is needed. We work proactively with stakeholders to understand what they require and what matters most in practice. This is particularly important in a sector like ours, where staff are genuinely passionate about the people they serve. Whether they are working in aged care, disability services, education, or another part of the organisation, they bring a strong sense of purpose. Through close stakeholder relationships, we make sure those client needs are represented in procurement decisions rather than viewed purely through a corporate or commercial lens.
Our team’s breadth of experience also helps. Collectively, we have worked across multiple industries, countries, and categories, which means there is very little we have not seen before. We use that experience to anticipate issues, add value early, and keep the end goal in focus. Ultimately, procurement’s role is to ensure critical services continue without interruption and that the organisation can deliver the quality of care and support our clients depend on.
Strategic Procurement in Healthcare: Healthcare and aged-care procurement comes with unique complexity, from clinical supplies to facilities management and services. How have you evolved VMCH’s procurement function to move beyond transactional purchasing toward strategic value creation?
The evolution of procurement at VMCH has been a genuine journey rather than a single transformation event. It has been iterative, practical, and built over time, beginning with one essential factor: trust. Positive stakeholder engagement is not optional in this kind of environment. It is a core success factor. Without it, procurement remains transactional. With it, procurement can become a strategic function that helps shape better outcomes.
As a team, we have worked hard to build strong relationships with key stakeholders so they can see first-hand what good procurement delivers. Once those relationships are in place, it becomes much easier to move conversations beyond ordering and price into value, service quality, risk, and long-term supplier performance. One good example is food supply, which is a critical category because it directly impacts our clients. Through regular engagement with the relevant stakeholders, we have developed a partnership model that focuses on getting the best from suppliers while also holding them to account. That approach has worked well and has resulted in a healthy mix of local and multinational suppliers with whom we now have strong working relationships.
The next step is scaling that model across more categories. In some areas, such as waste and cleaning, we are already well advanced. In others, we are still embedding the same level of maturity. For me, strategic procurement is about replicating what works, strengthening capability over time, and ensuring procurement is seen as a partner in delivering service outcomes, not just a function that processes transactions.
Supplier Partnerships and Service Continuity: Reliable supplier performance is essential in care environments where disruptions can directly impact patient and resident wellbeing. What strategies do you use to build strong supplier relationships and ensure service continuity across VMCH’s operations?
Our approach begins with recognising that core suppliers in a mission-driven environment cannot be managed at a distance. They need to be managed closely, consistently, and in genuine partnership. We meet regularly with our key partners, stay engaged with their developments, and make a conscious effort to understand where their expertise can help improve outcomes for our clients.
At VMCH, the range of goods and services we procure is extensive, which makes supplier trust particularly important. We aim to work with organisations that can be relied upon to deliver consistently and responsibly. Fortunately, our supplier network is both large and diverse, and to date it has proven to be a strong one. Many of our partners have regularly repaid that trust through dependable service, responsiveness, and a willingness to work with us when challenges arise.
Another important part of our strategy is recognising that suppliers understand their own product or service better than we do. Good supplier relationships therefore are not just about performance monitoring. They are also about learning. We want to understand where suppliers are heading, what innovations they are seeing in the market, and how those ideas might benefit VMCH. That mindset helps turn supplier engagement into a source of value rather than simply a compliance exercise.
Ultimately, service continuity is strongest when procurement builds relationships that are transparent, practical, and grounded in mutual respect. In our environment, that matters because reliable supplier performance is not just a commercial benefit. It directly supports continuity of care.
Digital Transformation in Procurement: Digitalisation is reshaping procurement across all sectors. How is VMCH leveraging procurement technology, data, or automation to improve transparency, compliance, and efficiency across sourcing and contract management?
We already have a number of digital tools available to us, particularly on the purchasing side, and these provide a useful foundation. More broadly, procurement technology and digitisation are areas we are actively considering, as I suspect many aged care organisations across Australia are doing. However, our view is that digital transformation has to begin with process clarity rather than technology for its own sake.
We have spent time reviewing our policies and processes to ensure they are fit for purpose. They must meet our probity requirements, support compliance, and still remain agile enough to provide flexibility, which is especially important in an aged care setting. In my view, digital tools and automation should flow from those underlying requirements rather than drive them. If the process is not right, technology will only reinforce the wrong approach faster.
That means our focus is less on adopting a system for the sake of appearing modern and more on ensuring that any future solution genuinely suits VMCH’s structure, operating model, and diverse service environment. We need tools that can support transparency, compliance, and efficiency without creating unnecessary rigidity for a complex organisation.
So while digitisation is absolutely on the agenda, our approach is deliberate. We want any technology investment to strengthen how we work, not distort it. In a mission-driven organisation, that discipline matters because procurement systems must support real service delivery needs, not just administrative neatness.
Sustainability and Responsible Sourcing: Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in healthcare and community services. How is VMCH embedding responsible sourcing, environmental considerations, and social value into procurement decisions?
Sustainability and responsible sourcing are both important priorities for VMCH, and that includes areas such as Modern Slavery, environmental responsibility, and wider social value. These are not treated as optional extras. They are embedded into our sourcing processes and reflected as mandatory criteria within our core contracts.
From a supplier perspective, we have deliberately engaged organisations that already demonstrate a credible track record in these areas. With sustainability, one example is our work with a waste management provider that is actively supporting waste diversion strategies to reduce the amount of material going to landfill. In other categories, such as cleaning and office products, our suppliers bring commitments around Indigenous engagement, community participation, and broader responsible sourcing initiatives. Those factors matter because procurement decisions should reflect organisational values as well as commercial requirements.
There is also another dimension to this at VMCH, which is our increasing focus on social enterprise. Although many of our internal stakeholders operate in aged care and health, there is growing attention across the organisation on how procurement can support businesses with a stronger social mission. We have been pleased to engage with some of those organisations and see that as an area we will continue to build on.
For me, responsible sourcing is most effective when it is practical, measurable, and aligned with stakeholder priorities. It should not sit outside normal procurement activity. It should be part of how contracts are designed, suppliers are selected, and value is understood across the organisation.
Risk and Resilience in Supply Chains: Recent global disruptions have highlighted vulnerabilities in healthcare supply chains. How does your team manage risk, ensure critical supply availability, and build resilience into VMCH’s procurement strategy?
For us, resilience begins with strong supplier relationships. Many procurement professionals will be familiar with the Kraljic model, including the idea that suppliers segment customers just as customers segment suppliers. It is essential that our most important suppliers see VMCH as a development or core customer rather than as a nuisance or purely exploitable account. We are confident that our strategic suppliers do see us in that way, and that position is critical when markets tighten or disruptions emerge.
The period during and after Covid illustrated this clearly. Although global supply conditions have improved since the height of the disruption, VMCH benefited enormously from the relationships cultivated by previous procurement leaders. Those partnerships helped ensure continuity of supply in particularly sensitive areas such as PPE, sanitiser, and medical waste disposal. Suppliers that valued VMCH as a partner worked with us to put interim measures in place so our facilities could continue operating and serving the community.
We have continued to build on that approach by staying close to our key suppliers in categories such as food, allied health, medical consumables, cleaning, and medical equipment. In practice, risk management is not only about forecasting disruption. It is about maintaining relationships strong enough to withstand it.
That philosophy remains central to our strategy. In healthcare and aged care, resilience is rarely built in isolation. It is built through trust, consistency, and ensuring that your most critical suppliers see long-term value in supporting your organisation.
Balancing Cost Efficiency with Care Outcomes: In a not-for-profit environment, balancing financial stewardship with quality care outcomes is vital. How do you approach cost optimisation while ensuring procurement decisions always support VMCH’s care mission?
In aged care, financial stewardship matters enormously, but it has to be managed in a way that never loses sight of service quality and care outcomes. Because of the nature of the sector, organisations like VMCH rely on a significant number of third-party suppliers, whether because of their specialisation, the complexity of the service, or geographic considerations. That means cost optimisation has to be approached carefully and sustainably.
Negotiation is part of our day-to-day work, and our aim is always to achieve a fair and reasonable price while ensuring that pricing remains sustainable over time. We do not want to secure short-term gains that later result in service issues or cost blowouts. Where possible, we also run sourcing events that introduce a healthy level of competitive tension so we can test the market properly and make informed choices.
We also work with procurement aggregators, which is an important part of our strategy. These organisations source on behalf of multiple businesses, including VMCH, and that allows us to benefit from economies of scale we could not achieve independently. Their contract management capability also gives us assurance that suppliers are properly vetted and actively managed.
The key is to keep the mission in view. Cost optimisation is important, but it must support, not compromise, the care experience. In our environment, the best procurement outcomes are those that balance commercial discipline with stable, high-quality service delivery.
Future Trends in Healthcare Procurement: Looking ahead, what trends do you see shaping procurement in healthcare and aged care over the next few years, and how is VMCH preparing to adapt to these changes?
Digitisation and artificial intelligence are clearly major forces shaping procurement, not only in aged care but across the profession more broadly. I am constantly hearing about new developments in the sector, ranging from improved monitoring and support systems to AI-enabled robotics that can assist aged care residents with diagnosis, day-to-day practical support, and even companionship. For procurement teams, this means digital literacy and awareness will only become more important over time.
At the same time, regulation will be a major driver of change. For organisations in aged care that rely on subcontractors or third-party providers, recent reforms mean providers will be increasingly accountable for the quality of care delivered on their behalf. Under the new Aged Care Act, workers of associated providers may effectively be treated as workers of the organisation they support. That raises the importance of supplier oversight, contract management, and governance significantly.
For procurement, this means that supplier management will have to become even more rigorous. Contract management will be more critical, not less, and organisations will need stronger visibility into how services are being delivered across their supplier base.
So while technology will continue to reshape the sector, regulatory accountability may prove just as significant. The organisations that adapt best will be those that strengthen both their digital capability and their contract and supplier governance at the same time.
Advice for Aspiring Procurement Leaders: Based on your experience in healthcare procurement, what advice would you offer to emerging procurement professionals looking to build meaningful careers in mission-driven and service-focused organisations?
My advice to emerging procurement professionals in a mission-driven organisation would be to listen and observe before taking action. Procurement professionals are generally adaptable and capable of working across many sectors, but in a mission-focused environment the drivers are rarely limited to savings or cost reduction. If you do not first understand what the organisation is trying to achieve and what matters most to its stakeholders, it is very easy to pursue the wrong priorities.
That is why I am cautious about the idea of immediately needing to hit the ground running. It sounds appealing, but in practice I think it is far more valuable to first understand the organisation properly before launching ambitious procurement initiatives. Context matters, especially in sectors where service delivery has such a direct human impact.
I would also keep stakeholder engagement front and centre. That means not only engaging leaders, but also spending time with staff in client-facing roles. Those conversations provide an invaluable perspective on what the business actually needs. Some of my most valuable insights have come from visiting VMCH teams on site, whether in aged care facilities or disability accommodation homes. Seeing the environment first-hand provides a level of understanding that cannot be achieved from behind a laptop.
Working in a mission-focused organisation is something I would strongly recommend. It offers exposure to diverse challenges, diverse people, and exceptionally committed teams. Supporting that mission through procurement is both professionally stretching and personally rewarding.
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