8 September 2010 | Helen Gilbert
ITV’s group procurement director Angela Porter has left her role after 17 months with the television broadcaster.
Porter, who has been credited with transforming the purchasing function at ITV, stepped down from her position at the end of August saying it was “time she sought new challenges”.
“I have enjoyed my time at ITV over the past year and feel we have made a real start in making ITV procurement the best in its field,” said Porter. “However, I now feel it is time for me to seek other challenges in the world of procurement and wish ITV every success.”
Porter joined the company on 1 April 2009. Under her guidance the procurement department saved £23.5 million for the year ending 31 December 2009 after undergoing a significant transformation.
This included adopting a category management buying strategy, gaining greater control over spend and cutting supplier numbers.
Porter’s departure comes as ITV is preparing to kick off a three-month review of the procurement process at the end of September. A spokesman confirmed the review was “always going to happen” and was not related to Porter leaving.
The spokesman added the appraisal was part of “wider company refocusing” efforts and will have three key objectives, which are:
• To understand the role of procurement within the business going forward;
• To agree the right organisational structure within procurement for ITV;
• To make procurement an enabler to ITV being easy to do business with and a creator of business value.
Speaking about the review, Andrew Newnham, head of technology sourcing at ITV, told SM that the broadcaster was moving towards a smaller number of commercial relationships with key partners.
“We have to consider whether [we] should be focusing on deriving commercial value from these partners and working with the business to innovate and bring new ideas to market much quicker than we have previously, rather than a more traditional approach that has focused on savings as a proxy for procurement success,” Newnham said.
