Welcome to the Team: Sales Director, Peter Hodgkinson

An Introduction

We are exhilarated to announce our latest addition to the Brooklyn family, Peter Hodgkinson. Pete joins us as our new Sales Director at what is an exciting time in Brooklyn’s growth.

Pete joins BVA having spent the majority of his professional working career within procurement or procurement-related technology. Pete joined the procurement team at Birmingham Heartlands NHS Trust in 2003 as a Senior Buyer supporting projects throughout the Trust which included the implementation of the Oracle ERP/P2P solution, and procurement of some of the most complex categories of spend including IT, medical equipment, and temporary staff.

Having gained his CIPS qualification and an MBA in Strategy and Procurement Management, Pete transitioned into the world of procurement technology after joining BravoSolution in 2007, which was acquired by JAGGAER in 2017. Having worn many hats in the initial start-up of the BravoSolution business in the UK such as Helpdesk Support, Trainer, Project Manager, Consultant and Pre-Sales, Pete carved out a successful career in sales, selling into many Public, Regulated and Private Sector Organisations. Leading to Sales Director.

If you would like to talk to Pete directly about gaining control with real-time visibility of compliance and risk for the entire vendor portfolio, please get in touch today.

Quick-Fire Q & A

To gain a better understanding of Pete’s background and what drives him to achieve great results for his customers, we put a series of questions to him.

Why did you decide to join Brooklyn Vendor Assurance?

I joined Brooklyn Vendor Assurance (BVA) because of the extremely exciting opportunity to help shape and grow the business. The enthusiastic and knowledgeable BVA team, coupled with an outstanding platform was a real pull to join.

What’s different about Brooklyn Vendor Assurance’s Platform?

I have held roles in procurement and procurement-related technology for over 18 years and I’ve seen a shift of focus for many CPOs from cost savings to driving greater value through their supply chain and therefore becoming a business critical division. This is challenging though as many organisations can only really drive value and compliance through their top tiers due to time and resource constraints augmented by often manual, offline tools and processes.

The founders of BVA recognised this and built the BVA platform to enable businesses to manage their entire supply chain through all tiers through an intuitive platform which I felt really differentiated them from the rest of the market. BVA brings AI/ML-powered best practice content workflows to solve the expensive challenges associated with managing suppliers and operationalise governance through digital frameworks. Businesses with 3^rd party spend which is critical to how they operate or those who operate in highly governed or regulated sectors will no doubt be fully aware of the challenges of ensuring compliance and this is where BVA can really help.

What’s more, with the role of procurement diversifying, we’re seeing procurement being tasked more and more with driving greater supplier innovation, social value, digitalisation sustainability and compliance. With BVA’s solution alignment to these initiatives it drives a compelling case to invest in enterprise platform to support and enable stakeholders throughout the business to identify actionable insights.

What were you most excited about before you joined us?

I was really intrigued by the BVA platform especially its application of AI against several traditionally admin-heavy user cases, such as the metadata extraction against pre-configured frameworks.

I remember one of my first tasks when I started my procurement career was to manually extract key metadata from paper copies of agreements to create a searchable database.  It took weeks to go through documents and pick out the relevant metadata. With BVA, the AI Smart OnBoarding Engine (SOE) automatically extracts key metadata and obligations within your contractual agreement in real-time, increasing efficiency, and enabling those who need the data to make informed decisions.

What’s something you find challenging about your work?

Due to COVID many of us have had to find new ways of working and connecting remotely. This was particularly challenging at the start of lockdown when trying to juggle work and family life, but as the lockdown is easing I am really looking forward to meeting people face to face. Although technology has really enabled work to continue, even accelerated work in some cases, the lack of face to face connections has meant that the social interaction we all benefit from has been reduced. I suspect that moving forward there will still be a reliance on technology to reduce the number of on-site meetings, but I certainly feel that it is really important that people can interact safely and enjoy a quick coffee and connect.

What motivates you at work?

Achieving joint success and celebrating it (which I hope to be doing a lot of here at Brooklyn Vendor Assurance)

What’s the best place you’ve travelled to? 

I’ve been lucky enough to travel to many places including on business trips to Europe, India and Dubai, but our honeymoon in Bali was amazing. The country is beautiful, the people we met were really friendly and kind, and the food was great. I hope to do more travelling when restrictions are lifted, and if possible take the kids to Bali too.

If you wish to learn more about how Brooklyn VA can drive continual regulatory compliance and optimal performance across your vendor management cycle, contact our expert team today.