PSC LIVE Dubai: Juliet Atweh, Wiz Fireside Chat
In a fireside chat at Procurement & Supply Chain LIVE Dubai, Juliet Atweh, Head of Global Procurement & Travel at Wiz, offered an inside look at what it takes to build a procurement function from the ground up.
From navigating early startup chaos to integrating scalable tools and fostering global vendor relationships, Juliet delivered pragmatic insights and real-world advice.
Building the procurement function from scratch
Juliet began by reflecting on her transition from Microsoft, where she spent five years learning the fundamentals of procurement operations, to joining Wiz in its early days.
"I joined on a mission to build the procurement department from scratch," she said. “We had no legacy in place. We had no process or policy.”
Early challenges involved resisting the urge to impose rigid corporate frameworks, instead creating lean processes that helped drive the business’s mission.
“Procurement is a business function,” Juliet explained, “and it doesn't work the same for every company.”
She emphasised the importance of asking herself daily whether any given process was actually enabling growth.
She said: “I used to ask that myself every day in that first year: if the process is necessary, if the process is helping our Wiz to grow and scale.”
From tools to team culture: scaling with intention
Year two at Wiz brought its own set of demands: automation and tool selection.
Juliet led the implementation of SAP’s ‘Save’ platform to manage procure-to-pay and standard procurement workflows.
“If it can be automated, it must be automated,” she asserted, highlighting the importance of streamlining manual tasks to make room for strategic focus.
Her priority was transforming procurement from a perceived blocker to an enabler.
“It gave us more like a UI experience to help our employees see procurement as a more account-moving forward department, and not as a blocker, she said.
As the company grew, so did the complexity. In years three and four, Juliet introduced more structure, policies and internal boundaries.
She explained that these safeguards were essential for supporting increased spend and headcount while still maintaining responsiveness: “We want to make sure we're responding to everyone. But boundaries and structure need to be in place.”
Maintaining tool adoption internally required a steady focus on communication.
“One of the best skills that you may have in procurement is to be humble,” she said. “Communicate based on how the function sees us and not vice versa.”
Vendor partnerships, flexibility, and forward thinking
Juliet also shared how external partnerships had to evolve as Wiz scaled.
“When you move to a startup, the partnership may seem different because you need to build everything from scratch,” she said, adding that as the business grew, more structure was needed in contracts.
Flexibility, she stressed, is critical in a scaling company: “You need to be flexible to try to understand how to prioritise, how to be a listener. It’s fine to have a mistake as long as you have a solution for it.”
When asked how to maintain efficiency during periods of hypergrowth, Juliet argued for a broader perspective.
“Efficiency can be measured differently,” she said, especially in an environment where the to-do list changes daily. A well-balanced team, she added, helps divide responsibilities between stable operations and ongoing change initiatives.
Culture, too, played a defining role, with Juliet highlighting how she built a procurement culture anchored in the company’s core values: truthfulness, partnership and execution.
“We’re winning together with our stakeholders – finance, IT and legal, if we're not moving, they're not going to be able to move.”
Looking ahead: AI and business orientation
Juliet concluded the session by outlining Wiz’s next phase of procurement strategy, where AI will take centre stage.
“The plan is to be more focused on AI, to help the team work smarter and not harder,” she said.
This includes using AI to enhance vendor and employee communication and enable proactive sourcing.
When reflecting on the journey, her advice to those stepping into procurement roles at startups was clear: become business-oriented.
“Start the conversation by asking: ‘I'm curious, let me know how this service is going to be helping you in your position'.”
Finally, she acknowledged the ongoing balancing act that procurement leaders face.
“You need to have a big eye, a critical eye and ask a lot of questions in order to make sure the business is safe,” she said. “But you also need to be an enabler.”
Juliet's honest and practical insights offered a blueprint for how to scale procurement with clarity, culture and adaptability.
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