MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT, EDUCATOR AND TRAINER,
CREATIVE COMMUNICATOR,
AWARD WINNING AUTHOR AND BROADCASTEr
ABOUT JONATHAN O’BRIEN
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Jonathan O’Brien is CEO of Positive Purchasing (positivepurchasing.com) – A world leading SaaS and training company specialising in equipping and enabling companies in procurement and negotiation. He has over 30 years’ experience working with global blue-chip organizations, helping to increase their procurement and negotiation capability.
Jonathan has developed many of the strategic methods that are now the benchmark for highly effective procurement. These are taught in universities the world over and power today’s global organizations including the 5i® Category Management approach, the 5S and 5A Supplier Relationship Management method including the Orchestra of SRM®, the OMEIA® Sustainable Procurement method, the 5D Power Buying® framework and the renowned Red Sheet® Negotiation planning tool. Latterly he has worked on embedding these established methods within the next generation of digital platforms including the Procleus® platform for strategic procurement, The Capella Guided Category Strategy Creator® and Ruby; the Guided Negotiation Plan Creator®.
Jonathan works directly with practitioners and executive teams to drive in the adoption of these proven best-practice approached and with a career spanning many sectors, he has a wealth of specific experience within the food, pharma, healthcare, oil and gas, agriculture, retail, FMCG, engineering, automotive, transport, electronics, aerospace, utilities, public sector and broadcasting industries.
Jonathan hosts The Procurement Show podcast and is also a best-selling, award winning author of five books regarded by many as instrumental in defining best practice strategic procurement and negotiation. These are Category Management in Purchasing, Supplier Relationship Management, Sustainable Procurement and the award-winning Negotiation for Procurement and Supply Chain Professionals – plus The Buyer’s Toolkit – all published by Kogan Page.
Jonathan started his career as an electronics engineer and soon moved into supplier quality assurance and a supplier auditing role. His experience auditing companies across multiple industries provided a solid foundation to understand how business operates and what is really needed to drive transformation. Consequently, Jonathan transitioned into a change manager role, then senior procurement, and finally procurement consulting.
Jonathan lives with his family in Plymouth, UK where the global headquarters of Positive Purchasing is also located. In his spare time he paints, writes, is a keen amateur photographer, and enjoys cycling and swimming.
BOOKS
BY JONATHAN O’BRIEN
A Practical Guide to Corporate Social Responsibility in the Supply Chain
Sustainable Procurement explains the vast topic of sustainability and the imperative to act for procurement and supply chain practitioners. Based around the OMEIA® Sustainable Procurement process, this book provides a step-by-step and highly practical methodology that embeds sustainable procurement into existing proven procurement approaches. It also provides some crucial new tools that equip and enable those in this field to drive highly effective supply-side sustainability.
This practical guide outlines how to establish sustainable procurement as a key strategic enabler to reduce supply-side risk and understand and drive in programs of action to respond to detrimental impacts in the supply base. It also explains how to seize the incredible future opportunity that the next generation supply base can offer to unlock new competitive advantage, and brand, social and environmental value from sustainable procurement.6
BY JONATHAN O’BRIEN
An Easy-To-Use Approach for Effective Teams
In order to buy well it is important to understand a few basic principles and apply a series of tools and approaches in given situations. The Buyer’s Toolkit distils the best practice tools for professional buying and negotiating into a simple, jargon-free framework that can be picked up and applied by anyone who buys. The book seeks to transform how individuals view and practise buying so they know when to influence a situation and what to do to buy well.
The Buyer’s Toolkit has a simple chapter layout, contains graphics and models, and a simple framework, that links them together. Covering different buying scenarios, understanding and defining the requirements, choosing the right deal and supplier, negotiation, managing the contract and the suppliers, fixing problems and sustainable buying, this comprehensive guide will help you boost your advantage as a buyer.
Save 20% on list price when you buy through Kogan Page. Click the Buy Now button and enter the code WLGPP20 at checkout.
3RD EDITION BY JONATHAN O’BRIEN
Unlocking the Value in Your Supply Base
With practical tips and a proven approach, this is the guide to understanding how to maximize the potential of suppliers to gain a competitive advantage, get more innovation and drive sustainability.
Supplier Relationship Management explains the importance of ongoing supplier management, how to measure and improve their performance, and for the critical few that can make a dramatic difference to our organization, drive in and future-proof strategic collaborative relationships.
The Orchestra of SRM® framework, coupled with expert tips, tools and resources, delivers clear guidance on how to design an effective supplier relationship management program, with maximum return on time and investment.
5TH EDITION BY JONATHAN O’BRIEN
A Strategic Approach to Maximize Business Profitability
Category Management in Purchasing is a comprehensive guide to strategic category management which provides a step-by-step guide to its implementation and use, and enables readers to deliver cost savings, value from the supply base, reduced risk, innovation and to drive supply side sustainability. Now in
its fifth edition, this text has cemented its place as the essential reference for category management practitioners.
In this new edition, Jonathan O’Brien shows how a strategic approach needs to integrate with other approaches, such as supplier relationship management and how the procurement function negotiates. Additionally, this new edition includes some new insights, based upon the experience of senior practitioners in industry, on how to make category management a success in the organization. It also includes some general updates and contextualizes the future procurement function and an ever increasing digitally enabled, de-globalized, post Brexit world. There is also additional material on the effect of international developments on procurement, updated tools and templates, and examples of how these have been successfully used in industry.
Category Management in Purchasing, 5th edition connects theory and practice and provides readers with the tools to analyze complex sourcing situations quickly and clearly, and so develop innovative and creative proposals for sourcing.
Get 20% off list price when you buy through Kogan Page. Click the buy now button and enter the code WLGPP20 at checkout.
BY JONATHAN O’BRIEN
A Proven Approach for Negotiations with Suppliers
The first edition was Winner of the 2013 Paris ACA prize for best business book
Negotiation for Procurement and Supply Chain Professionals allows the purchasing professional or the buying team to evaluate the supplier in advance, assess the sales team, and tailor their negotiation strategy depending on concession strategies, cultural influences and game theory. It provides a strong framework for discussion in advance of the meeting, allowing the negotiator to plan their agenda, objectives and tactics.
Based upon the Red Sheet® Methodology, this book is a proven and collaborative technique used by many companies globally. The new edition includes supply chain planning, updates on multi-party negotiation for supply chain negotiations, Brexit as a retrospective example of negotiation, and how negotiation capability will need to change in the future.
Save 20% on list price when you buy through Kogan Page. Click the Buy Now button and enter the code PWLG20 at checkout.
TRAINING, coaching, Speaking and workshops
Jonathan O’Brien is a highly acclaimed trainer and speaker with vast experience of delivering impactful and memorable workshops and entire learning and development programs worldwide or online via our interactive ‘just like broadcast’ webinars and virtual workshops.
He is a specialist communicator who combines his business, creative and broadcast experience to design and deliver inspirational, high-impact, in person or live, online experiences.
Jonathan leads workshops the world over and has helped transform procurement and negotiation capability across hundreds of leading global organizations. Jonathan has trained tens of thousands of procurement practitioners in strategic procurement and negotiation and also trains sales teams how to negotiate. Jonathan is also an experienced facilitator; he teaches and coaches executives leadership teams runs team-building workshops designed to enable high performing teams realize their strategic goals.
SPECIALIST PROCUREMENT & NEGOTIATION TRAINING & COACHING
How to book training, speaking, coaching or workshops by Jonathan O’Brien
Jonathan is available for specialist speaking, coaching or training workshops engagements or alternatively chose from the wide range of high-impact procurement and negotiation training courses delivered by Positive Purchasing, based upon the books and methods developed by Jonathan O’Brien. These and delivered either virtually or in the classroom by one of the experienced practitioners from his team or, by special arrangement, by Jonathan.
Bespoke design
Specialist course design to meet specific requirements using a blend of high-impact communication and learning approaches to encourage interaction and participation. Perfect if you need to develop and deliver a unique learning and development plan for your team to uplift their capability in the areas you need, or to bring to life your own corporate methodology or approach.
PROFESSIONAL SPEAKING
Jonathan’s podcast The Procurement Show podcast is one of the foremost podcasts in the procurement sector with a reach of over 400,000+ listeners worldwide. Known for tackling the topics we all need to hear about in a fun and engaging way, Jonathan and Paul bring the latest thinking and the best insight to the ears of anyone in procurement, and some that are just curious to know what it’s all about.
Be part of the show by submitting your ‘Procurement fun fact’ or an ‘Ask Jonathan’ question – you might be featured on the next
episode.
Listen and subscribe to The Procurement Show for
free now. Just search on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts from,
or ask you smart speaker to play ‘The Procurement Show’
jonathanobrien.co.uk 