A coffee with… Alex Saric, CMO, Ivalua

A former tank and scout platoon leader in the US Army’s Calvary, Alex Saric describes his journey into procurement and product marketing as a “long and twisted” one.

However, it’s clear that his experience of daily negotiation and conflict resolution with multinational organisations and locals, as well as being personally accountable for over $11m worth of army equipment, gives him good grounding as a procurement CMO.

His civilian career started with a spell as a strategy consultant, which ultimately led him into the tech world, where he built a spend analysis solution for b2b and ecommerce solutions provider, Zeborg. He later joined Ariba which was acquired by software giant SAP.

Keen to work on the procurement side of the business again, he joined Ivalua in 2017 as its first CMO “ And that’s a pattern he points out, “I’ve not taken a job since I left the army that was a pre-established role.”

So, you like to carve out your own niche in job roles?

I get bored quickly, so I like the challenge of creating something new. But anecdotally, it feels like I’ve been demoted in every job since I left university, because my first job was co-ordinating the first democratic elections in the province of Srebrenik in Bosnia during the war. The stakes couldn’t have been higher – so everything has felt like much lower stakes since.

What key lessons did you take from the army that you use in business?

Number one: Having been a scout, I quickly learned the importance of communication and giving people very clear guidance, so they can operate independently. They need to understand what the objective is, and what kind of parameters they are operating under. That also serves well in an international tech business.

Positivity is also important. There is often an air of pessimism in the world but in the army, you don’t get the option not to do something. You must follow orders. If that’s the  mission, your only question is how you get it done. I try to instil that mindset in my team because it can help them achieve remarkable things.

What does your average day look like?

One thing I really enjoy about this role is that it varies. On average, every third week, I’m on the road, speaking at a meeting with customers, or visiting an office or gathering for some kind of planning meeting. But if I’m not travelling, my mornings are packed, we have a lot of European colleagues and customers, so I’m usually on the phone.

I always try to block a certain amount of time out of my calendar because otherwise it becomes much harder in the afternoons to get things done – if I don’t make some space, I find I get caught up in the day-to-day things that must get done, and there is no space to deal with anything apart from emergencies.

If I was to ask your team, what is it like working with you, what do you think they would say?

You’d have to ask them! I haven’t had anyone resign in over four years, and the market is hot, so hopefully that means they’d say positive things. I try to be fair and open when they come to me – although my wife says I’m really mean to them!

What excites you about technology?

When I was working in consulting, I enjoyed moving from project to project because it was so dynamic. But the problem is you never got to see a project through to completion – you’d always be moving on to the next one.

In tech you work with smart people, in a rapidly changing environment, but you get to see the fruits of your labour. It never gets boring and with new developments such as AI, you can see the real-world impact quickly.

What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in the last few years?

We’ve had a lot of expansion, but marketing involves working with leaders across the organisation, so building those relationships, especially during a rapid expansion that sees new people joining can be a big challenge.

Covid had a massive impact on the procurement sector and has changed the way people interact with each other, from in person to all digital webcasts. People very quickly got digital burnout. As we transitioned back, you find you are getting less productivity and less efficiency from the same programmes. The big challenge has been how to get back to productivity as the market evolves.

If you could change anything about procurement tech, what would it be?

One of the big challenges we have in this sector is that everyone sort of sounds the same, but they’re not. Every provider claims to have a unified platform, or to offer GenAI solutions, but they aren’t really offering that. We need some way to get through the fluff so that people can understand what is best for clients. We need more transparency around strengths and weaknesses.

How do you manage the hype cycle?

You must do your own assessment – every couple of years there is a new technology that is the next big thing. At Ivalua we’ve worked very hard to judge what impact new developments will have on our sector.

When blockchain was the hot thing, we looked at it and could see some applications for procurement, but we could also see other ways of solving the problem.

When AI first came out, we saw some potential and began investing in it carefully, but we also recognised there are some meaningful limitations.

So, you must step back and say, “how is this going to work for us and our product?” Now, with GenAI, we are all in because we can see it working and the real-world innovations. But we’re not just taking anything that says ‘GenAI’ – we are doing it on a use case-by-use case basis.

How do you take your coffee?

Like my career, that has evolved over the years. My wife, who is German, is more of a straight American black kind of person, but for me, it is everything in moderation – a little bit of milk, a little bit of sugar. I do enjoy a cappuccino in the afternoon.

If you could have a coffee with any leader past or present, who would you drink with?

When it comes to historical figures, I have an obvious bias to the military, and I would like to meet someone like Eisenhower or Teddy Roosevelt.

Eisenhower had to put together a very diverse coalition and manage not just the military strategy but also the politics of the time. He had to do all of that while maintaining an air of integrity – doing all that while remaining true to himself is impressive.

Teddy Roosevelt was a fascinating individual. It is almost incomprehensible to go from being someone who was handicapped, to competing in the Olympics, all the way to becoming President of the United States. Then afterwards he went on his own to navigate the Amazon, which is wild! He was an impressive person.