In a rapidly shifting global landscape, procurement can no longer operate as a reactive function. For Vidya Malkani, Founder & CEO of VMC Consulting, agility, data driven insight, and proactive supplier collaboration are the keys to not only navigating disruption but driving long term value. Drawing from her extensive experience across diverse sectors, Vidya shares how she leverages deep market intelligence, strong supplier partnerships, and stakeholder alignment to build resilient, cost effective, and forward thinking procurement strategies. In this Executive Insight, she reflects on the pivotal role procurement plays in shaping business growth, managing risk, and fostering innovation—even in the face of uncertainty.
How do you adapt your procurement strategies to respond to changing market conditions?
Adapting to changing market conditions is all about being proactive rather than reactive. Waiting until something happens often leads to rushed, short term decisions that don’t really stick. I focus on staying ahead by using a two part strategy.
Internally, it’s about building strong market intelligence and leveraging solid data insights. This helps us spot trends early, both at a macro and micro level, so we can make smart, informed decisions before challenges arise.
Externally, I place a lot of emphasis on working closely with suppliers and business partners. When everyone’s aligned, it becomes much easier to roll out strategies that are effective and results driven. Having that trust and collaboration also helps validate our approach, especially when it’s supported by robust data.
At the end of the day, it’s about staying agile, staying informed, and making sure procurement is ready to respond effectively, no matter what the market throws our way.
How has agility helped you overcome supply chain disruptions?
Agility has been key in helping me navigate and overcome supply chain disruptions. In my experience, it can either soften the blow in terms of cost and delivery impacts during crises or serve as a strong competitive advantage, and I’ve dealt with both scenarios.
During COVID, for example, lead times on critical items increased drastically. By quickly pivoting from a just in time to a just in case inventory model and exploring alternative sourcing options, we were able to mitigate the disruption. Agile thinking played a major role in executing this shift effectively.
We also used the situation as an opportunity to build robust analytics, enhance market intelligence, and establish proactive methodologies to prepare for future events. This significantly reduced the impact of subsequent global disruptions.
Beyond risk management, agility enabled us to drive business growth. By leveraging demand insights and market trends, we introduced sustainable products, not as policy mandates, but as market driven opportunities. This forward thinking approach positioned us as industry leaders and contributed to new growth avenues.
What strategies do you use to maintain flexibility while ensuring cost-effectiveness?
To maintain flexibility while ensuring cost effectiveness, I focus on understanding historical purchase trends and stakeholder buying behaviours. These insights help identify spend categories that are volatile or high risk, particularly those with erratic demand or a single source supplier base, which require a more tailored approach.
My strategy begins by prioritising the most strategic and unpredictable areas of spend. Tactics like value engineering, developing supplier partnerships, distributing risk through multi source plans, and building flexibility into contract terms and conditions have proven effective. Transparent communication with suppliers fosters collaboration and responsiveness, even during uncertain times.
Internally, aligning with stakeholders on demand forecasting and key decision making points is crucial. When expectations and priorities are clearly defined, it becomes much easier to apply the right strategy. Ultimately, a balanced approach, combining proactive supplier engagement with internal alignment, helps achieve both agility and cost control.
How do you balance agility with long term supplier relationships?
In today’s fast moving business environment, adaptability is crucial, especially in procurement. It’s about striking the right balance between staying agile and maintaining strong supplier relationships. Just as we make quick, strategic decisions to drive results, suppliers are also navigating their own priorities and profitability. At the end of the day, these partnerships thrive on mutual value.
Long term relationships tend to last with suppliers who truly move the needle financially and where our business is equally important to them. When both sides understand their interdependence, navigating change becomes a collaborative effort, much less disruptive and far more strategic.
From my own experience, I’ve encountered situations where key suppliers struggled to keep pace during challenging or fast changing circumstances. In those moments, open and honest conversations about current roadblocks and future expectations made all the difference. They allowed us to reset, realign, and adjust plans while keeping the relationship intact. This reinforces the idea that agility and long term commitment are not mutually exclusive, they can and should go hand in hand.
Can you share an example of how procurement agility helped your organisation?
In a previous role, procurement agility was instrumental in transforming our capital asset sourcing strategy. We were dealing with inconsistent stakeholder purchasing behaviours and a fragmented local supplier base, which led to inefficiencies and increased risk exposure.
Embracing an agile mindset, we conducted a deep dive analysis of 10 years’ worth of spend and asset lifecycle data. This allowed us to identify preferred brands, risk profiles, and total cost of ownership across asset categories. Armed with this insight, we built a compelling business case for change and secured stakeholder buy in.
We pivoted from a decentralised, dealer level sourcing model to a more agile, direct engagement model with key manufacturers. This shift enabled us to negotiate comprehensive contracts that included cost modeling, volume based rebates, R&D collaboration, and lifecycle support.
As a result, we reduced procurement lead times by 70% and improved cost efficiency by 40%. More importantly, this agile approach gave us the flexibility to pivot between suppliers during market disruptions without compromising quality or service continuity, boosting organisational resilience and long term value.
