Agent of change: Anders Lillevik
Frustrated by the inflexibility of procurement, industry veteran Anders Lillevik became an agent of change. His solution, as Founder of Focal Point, is an all-in-one procurement platform that’s disrupted a critical industry at just the right time.
During his more than 25 years in the procurement sector, Anders Lillevik developed a fair few ideas on how to improve things.
"Procurement had gotten very complex during that time," he tells The CEO Magazine.
"When I started, it was all about saving money. You took categories and commoditized them. Life was good."
The introduction of a heavy layer of regulation, coupled with the high-profile failures of suppliers such as Enron, changed things.
"Procurement could no longer cherry-pick their projects," he says.
"Complexity grew. It went from saving money to saving the company from bad actors. We also have to save the world by making sure we aren’t buying from polluters or people who hire slaves, for instance."
Modernizing procurement
As a Chief Procurement Officer for various large-scale businesses throughout his career, Lillevik developed a way to update the process.
"I had the idea of creating a solution that would help procurement and their adjacent stakeholders manage their work in a much more transparent fashion," he says.
What may come as a surprise is the sleek efficiency of his eventual solution. Lillevik is the Founder of Focal Point, a platform that aspires to modernize enterprise procurement and empower the teams responsible.
"We need to be able to do more with less."
"Every considerable element has to be done in unison to make sure things get done properly, at the right time, by the right people," Lillevik says. "There was no way to track all of that until Focal Point."
Launched in late 2020, Focal Point is Lillevik’s one-stop procurement solution.
"Initially, it could track procurement activities from left to right, but it was fairly sophomore," he says.
After landing his first two customers, Focal Point began to pick up steam as businesses recognized their own need for the product, as well as its potential.
"We went straight into enterprise almost immediately," he recalls. "It proved large companies required solutions such as this."
Boosting capabilities
As the size of Focal Point’s customers grew, so did the platform’s capabilities.
"We have large, global clients with complex requirements to be met," Lillevik says. "We’re very proud that companies have trusted us with their business processes, so we have to make sure we’re able to handle their processes efficiently and effectively."
Throughout his career, Lillevik was enticed by the strategic nature of procurement.
"You’re trying to help organizations maximize the value of the money they spend and the relationships they have," he says. "It’s the part that makes me excited about doing what we do."
"I love being able to say, ‘We can do this better.’"
Another point of excitement emerged in the wake of Focal Point’s launch. Clients began using the versatile platform to solve problems Lillevik and his team had never considered.
"Focal Point is very flexible, and of course I can’t know all the problems procurement professionals face every day," he says. "But seeing them take the platform we built and apply it in different ways, using it for different workflows and case scenarios, it’s a really cool thing for me."
It’s a far cry from the days of handling everything on an Excel spreadsheet, but Lillevik says that for many procurement managers, that era lingers.
"So many things are still done that way," he says. "To me, I love being able to say, ‘We can do this better’, and it’s true."
Simplifying processes
Complexity is the product of rigidity, Lillevik says, and Focal Point seeks to destroy both.
"The one-trick pony is going to be put out to pasture," he says. "Too many solutions do one thing and one thing only, and that’s what makes things so complex. You have one system for contracts, one for spend analysis and one for risk analysis. I wanted to join these things together and make things easier, and that’s what we’ve done."
As Focal Point grows, Lillevik is careful not to let the platform itself become a one trick pony. "By the end of this year we’ll have the version of Focal Point that I envisioned," he says.
"Customers don’t have to pay extra for the features we’ve added; they just become integrated into the workflow."
For a company that started with the problem rather than the solution, this atypical startup has made good on its promise. Lillevik says there are many more problems to solve.
"We’re developing many new products, and it’s all very cool. In my opinion, flexibility is the way forward. We need to be able to do more with less and it’s going to be a great ride," he says.