In our “Getting to know” interview series, we feature the people behind Scoutbee, their motivations for joining the company, the work they do, and a bit about their life outside the office. Next up in our series is Richard Hogg, our General Manager for the EMEA Region. 

Richard has spent the last 20+ years in procurement and supply chain SaaS technology businesses, supporting growth phases across EMEA with JAGGAER, BravoSolution, and Achilles.

Passionate about the strategic value that procurement can bring to an organization and society as a whole, Richard leads the development and execution of Scoutbee’s go-to-market strategy across EMEA, including commercial and sales team functions.

Richard, you joined the company in April, 2022. Why did you choose Scoutbee?

I’ve been in the procurement and technology arena for 20+ years, so I’ve got a deep passion for the space in terms of the value that combining technology and procurement can bring to organizations.

Scoutbee was interesting to me because of its super successful heritage in supplier scouting and discovery and, in particular, its current pivot and transformational growth – developing a whole new approach to enabling procurement to have a 360-degree view of suppliers. It’s nascent, it’s emerging, it’s got huge potential. It’s slightly challenging but, above all else, it’s fun.

What’s a typical day like for you and what do you like most about your job?

Typically, I work with people, which I love. Unfortunately, too much of it is still via video call, but we’re getting back to the face-to-face world which is great. So, my typical day would be a combination of dealing internally with colleagues, where we look to identify, understand, and address some of the problems and challenges that our customers have and then define and develop success for those customers. The other side of that is going out and talking to those prospects and customers. 

With such a busy schedule, how do you achieve a work-life balance? 

I just ensure there’s a delineation when it’s needed. Work-life balance is really only a problem if you have too much of one or don’t enjoy one or the other. So, it helps if you enjoy your work because obviously it blends and merges with your personal life. It also really helps to have a supportive family around you, who can occasionally help you reprioritize and rebalance.

Considering your extensive experience to date, what impact are you hoping to make at Scoutbee?

I’m hoping to support the organization in its pivot to becoming the global supplier intelligence provider of choice. We’ve got such a great heritage in supplier scouting and discovery and my passion is about taking these technologies and helping organizations adopt them and get value out of them.

More than ever before, procurement leaders are having to be increasingly dynamic in the way they work with suppliers. Can you tell us a bit about the value that SCOUTBEE Supplier Intelligence brings to the table?

I think a lot of procurement and supply chain organizations have always held information regarding suppliers but, what’s coming to the fore, particularly where Scoutbee positions itself, is a true 360-degree view of not just the information that an individual organization itself holds on a given supplier – for example, what products they’re buying, how much they’re spending, what contracts they have, etc. – but enriching that with external content. 

External information providers may provide enrichment for financial resilience metrics, such as Moody’s or Dun & Bradstreet, or diversity ratings from supplier.io. In addition to that, by using big data and web crawling capabilities, we’re presenting publicly available – but very difficult to acquire – content and intelligence regarding suppliers, to identify, extract, consolidate, merge, clean, and align an individual supplier record. So you get, for once, a true 360-degree view of a supplier. 

Using the power of ML algorithms over our knowledge graph data foundation allows us to understand extremely complex relationships and provide unique insights from seemingly unconnected data points. That’s really our whole mission.

Let’s move on to some more personal questions if you don’t mind. What did you want to be when growing up?

I wanted to be a professional squash player. But the world of procurement technology is a super second best! I had the good fortune to play for Yorkshire (England), which was the best county at the time, and three out of my five teammates went on to become world number ones. 

You’re happiest when?

On a sunny Saturday morning by the pond eating a sausage and egg sandwich with my wife. It’s a little local nature area in London where you can walk around and just chill out and look at the ducks and the swans. 

Best vacation you’ve been on?

I’ll have to go with getting married in Italy. A load of our family and close friends came over and celebrated with us for several days, so that trumps every other vacation. We were married in Siena and then stayed in a farmhouse in the Tuscan hills. It was brilliant.

Tell us something about yourself that would surprise us.

My first sales job was selling latex prophylactics during the school summer holidays. There was a company manufacturing them in my village in the Yorkshire Dales. I used to play squash with some of the people there and, somehow, I got the job.

What’s on your bucket list?

Being happy. Nothing more complicated than that. Maybe I should have said selling something technology-related, but I think being happy is probably a better one.

Would you like to join our team? Please check out our “Open Roles” here.