GEP Europe Tour 2025, Amsterdam: Q&A with Darren Lynch
GEP kicked off its Europe Tour 2025 with a pair of fantastic events in Amsterdam and London.
The software specialist brought together the sharpest minds in procurement and supply chain for a series of insightful keynotes focused on groundbreaking advancements in AI-driven solutions.
Procurement Leaders Panels, featuring executives from the likes of Costa Coffee, Perfetti Van Melle and Versuni, brought each event to a fitting end.
The tour continues in Munich on Tuesday, 11 February.
In Amsterdam, Supply Chain Digital caught up with Darren Lynch, Vice President Consulting for the EMEA region at GEP, who explains why companies should be joining GEP in the era of enterprise AI.
Tell us a bit about you and your role with GEP
My name's Darren Lynch and I look after our European and Middle East business. I'm part of our global leadership team and responsible for all our exciting client work in Europe.
Give us a brief overview of GEP
We're a specialist procurement and supply chain organisation. We're been around for about 25 years – in fact, we just celebrated our 25th anniversary at the end of last year.
We specialise in procurement and direct and indirect spend. Our focus is on cost reduction, working capital, improving third party risk management and end-to-end supply chain services.
The GEP Europe Tour is growing at an impressive pace. Why is it so important to bring industry professionals together in one place?
We need people to get together and have conversations – to talk, collaborate and share experiences.
These are industry peers and professionals. I've spent half my career in procurement as a professional and half advising and delivering services. This is a forum for people to share concerns and learn from each other.
We started this initiative a couple of years ago and what we see now is a large increase in the number of people turning up. They're from diverse industries, but all with common challenges.
Why do GEP solutions stand out when it comes to driving real business value?
We're focused purely on procurement and supply chain. We don't do anything else with our software and services. Our interest is in providing solutions that answer your needs; it's not to be part of a broader ecosystem.
Being privately owned is a big difference as well. We put all our money back into the product, the services and our people. We invest where we want to invest when it's the right thing to do and we want to give back to society.
Why should companies join GEP in the era of enterprise AI?
Companies should join us in any era, but particularly this era because of its new challenges.
There are lots of questions and hype surrounding AI; some of it real, some of it not so real. But what's really important is to understand why people should work with us: because we're focused solely on procurement and supply chain. We deliver those services every day to people as part of managed services.
So, whether you deal with us for software, consulting or managed services, we're end-to-end responsible for that. It's in our interest to get it right for us and for you as a client.
Remaining tour dates
- Munich, 11 February 2025
- Zurich, 25 February 2025
- Paris, 5 March 2025
- Geneva, 6 March 2025
- Copenhagen, 11 March 2025
- Stockholm, 12 March 2025
- Helsinki, 13 March 2025
- Lisbon, 19 March 2025
- Madrid, 20 March 2025
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