Overview
With more than thirty years of experience across strategy consulting and procurement leadership, Jeff Ball brings a uniquely broad perspective to his role as Head of Procurement at MediaNews Group—one of the largest newspaper publishers in the United States, with titles including the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Denver Post, and San Jose Mercury News.
Jeff joined MediaNews Group in 2015, inheriting a procurement function with massive spend under management and a mandate that extended far beyond purchasing. “Procurement’s an interesting role, because I talk to everybody,” Jeff explains. “I deal on a daily basis with HR, legal, circulation, digital, IT—you name it. It’s a very broad span of control, which is both a blessing and a curse.”
As MediaNews Group continued to grow and evolve, Jeff needed a way to manage that complexity—while improving cost efficiency, strengthening supplier relationships, and aligning procurement more closely with the company’s strategic goals. Suplari became a central part of that effort.
Bringing Clarity to a Complex Procurement Environment
At MediaNews Group, procurement spans hundreds of suppliers, multiple business units, and a wide range of spend categories. While the organization had ERP systems in place, Jeff quickly identified a major gap: spend analytics.
“Our ERP tools are clunky and underdeveloped when it comes to analytics,” Jeff notes. “To get anything meaningful, the data had to be exported elsewhere—and that’s inefficient.”
Suplari filled that gap by providing a clear, intuitive view of spend across the organization—without requiring heavy manual work or complex reporting workflows. For Jeff, this wasn’t just about visibility; it was about establishing a reliable baseline that procurement could actually act on. “When you think about building a comprehensive baseline of spend in your organization and being able to slice it and dice it very easily and very quickly, Suplari is the first phase of procurement’s do, check, act cycle.”
UX, Capability, and Fit—Why Suplari Stuck
Jeff evaluated multiple tools before choosing Suplari, and several factors made the difference: usability, cost-effectiveness, and depth of capability.
“I love its UX. It’s very easy to use, and they have a great dashboard that suggests sourcing opportunities,” he says. “It’s ground zero of my sourcing philosophy.”
Four years later, that assessment hasn’t changed. “Here we are four years later, and it’s still the best fit,” Jeff explains. “It’s cost-effective, easy to use, and I’ve got a great rapport with their management team.” Rather than forcing procurement to adapt to rigid software, Suplari supported Jeff’s existing workflows—making insights immediately accessible and actionable. “They’re always helpful and responsive,” he adds. “I have nothing but pleasant things to say about Suplari.”
Supporting Zero-Based Budgeting with Data You Can Trust
One of the most critical ways Suplari supports MediaNews Group is through zero-based budgeting—a process Jeff co-leads with the CFO. This approach requires precise, defensible spend data and the ability to analyze costs from multiple angles.
“One key to success in my role is the fact that we do zero-based budgeting,” Jeff explains. “The folks that I work with at Suplari know this full well.” Suplari enables this by making it easy to identify spending trends, compare costs across business units, and surface inefficiencies that might otherwise go unnoticed. With shared visibility into the data, procurement can facilitate informed, cross-functional discussions rather than relying on assumptions or anecdotal evidence.
“All of this comes from having the data at your disposal—at your fingertips,” Jeff says. “To be able to say, ‘Why is this cluster paying five or ten times more for the same product or service?’ You can’t do that without Suplari.”
From Back-Office Function to Strategic Partner
For Jeff, the real value of Suplari is how it elevates procurement’s role inside the organization. With trusted, easy-to-access data, procurement can engage stakeholders with confidence—backing recommendations with facts rather than intuition. This shift has helped transform procurement from a reactive, back-office function into a strategic driver of cost savings and operational improvement. By simplifying complex data and making insights accessible, Suplari enables better decisions across sourcing, budgeting, and supplier management.
“I think most CFOs intuitively get it,” Jeff says. “You just have to explain why other enterprise systems aren’t built to do this—and why Suplari is best in class for spend analytics.”
A Final Word: Practical, Actionable Procurement Intelligence
Jeff encourages peers to evaluate procurement tools across three dimensions: UX, price, and capability—both today and where the platform is headed. “I would encourage any of my colleagues to look at it through those three dimensions,” he says. For MediaNews Group, Suplari delivers on all three. By providing intuitive analytics, actionable insights, and dependable data, the platform supports smarter decision-making and measurable impact across procurement. Through Jeff Ball’s leadership and the integration of Suplari, MediaNews Group has built a procurement function grounded in clarity, trust, and continuous improvement—positioned not just to manage spend, but to actively shape the organization’s future.
Overview
Since 2020, BT Sourced has operated as the procurement arm of British Telecom—one of the largest and most complex telecommunications organizations globally. Under the leadership of Diarmuid O’Donoghue, Head of Digital Procurement, BT Sourced was created to rethink how procurement delivers value, moving beyond traditional cost savings toward innovation, simplification, and digital enablement.
For Diarmuid, procurement transformation isn’t about tools alone—it’s about changing how people work, how decisions are made, and how data is used to drive action across the business. “To really unlock the true value of procurement away from the general cost savings, we had to think differently. We had to disrupt essentially—through innovation, simplification, and digitalization.”
BT Sourced became the incubator for this new approach: a place to test, pilot, and scale platforms that could modernize procurement across BT. Suplari emerged as a key partner in making that shift real.
Shifting Procurement from Analytics to Action
When BT Sourced set out to modernize procurement, the team knew they didn’t want another traditional spend analytics platform. Historical reporting and static dashboards weren’t enough. What they needed was a way to turn data into something people could actually use—quickly and confidently. “We didn’t want just a general spend platform that relayed spend information back to us. We really wanted something different,” Diarmuid explains. “And we certainly say we know we have that in Suplari.” The goal was not just insight, but action: enabling category managers, finance partners, and procurement teams to move faster without relying on analysts or manual spreadsheet work. Procurement needed to be embedded in daily decision-making, not stuck behind reporting cycles.
People, Processes, and Technology—Working Together
At BT Sourced, procurement transformation is grounded in the alignment of people, processes, and technology. Diarmuid is clear that none of these elements can succeed in isolation.
“You can have great people, but if processes are not good, it’s not going to work. And if you have great people and good processes, but the tools you need aren’t good, it’s not going to work either.”
Technology, in this context, is not about complexity—it’s about normalizing access to insight. Reflecting on the role of digital tools, Diarmuid points to the importance of making technology feel like a natural part of work. “The advancement of technology is about making it more normal in people’s lives.”
That’s where Suplari fit. Rather than forcing teams to adapt to rigid workflows, Suplari integrated into existing procurement operations, becoming part of the team’s daily rhythm. “It’s not just a tool,” Diarmuid says. “It’s basically part of our procurement team’s daily life.”
Enabling Faster, More Confident Decisions
One of the most immediate impacts of Suplari at BT Sourced was speed. With Suplari, category managers could answer complex questions in just a few clicks—identifying high-growth suppliers, spotting spend without contracts, or surfacing compliance issues without building reports.“In essentially two clicks, your category manager can identify high-growth suppliers in a category or pinpoint POs raised against suppliers without a contract,” Diarmuid explains.
Beyond out-of-the-box insights, BT Sourced worked closely with Suplari to develop custom insights aligned with their operating model. This flexibility allowed the team to adapt the platform to their specific needs rather than forcing procurement to conform to generic analytics. “Decisions can slow any company up,” Diarmuid notes. “We save time within procurement by having the ability to pull down those insights quickly.”
Trust, Visibility, and Organizational Impact
Trust in data was a critical factor in driving adoption across BT. Procurement insights needed to be consistent, reliable, and defensible—especially when shared with stakeholders outside procurement. By making Suplari accessible across the organization, BT Sourced enabled thousands of employees across finance, sales, and accounting to work from the same trusted view of data. This transparency freed up the procurement team to focus on strategic work rather than constantly validating numbers or rebuilding reports.
“To make change, you need to see what’s actually going on,” Diarmuid explains. “If it’s not in front of you, you can’t address it—that was our problem before.”
With Suplari, procurement could move from reactive reporting to proactive value creation—surfacing risks, identifying opportunities, and aligning teams around shared priorities.
A Practical View on AI in Procurement
While Diarmuid sees clear potential in AI, he remains pragmatic about its role. “AI might be a little overhyped,” he admits, “but there are benefits—if you don’t let AI be your strategy.” At BT Sourced, AI is valuable when it solves real business problems. Before Suplari, procurement relied on fragmented systems and manual processes that limited visibility and slowed execution. With Suplari, AI-enhanced insights are grounded in trusted data and tied directly to procurement outcomes.
“We’ve come a long way in analytics and procurement over the last five to ten years,” Diarmuid reflects. “Tools like Suplari give us the clarity we need to make informed, strategic decisions.”
A Final Word: Building a Foundation for Continuous Improvement
At its core, procurement at BT Sourced remains a people-driven business. Suplari’s role has been to build trust—trust in data, in decisions, and in the processes that support them. “There has to be a bit of upfront work,” Diarmuid acknowledges, “but over time, you see the benefits as the need for changes reduces and the quality improves.” For BT Sourced, success means continuing to experiment, learn, and evolve—using data and technology not as an end in itself, but as a foundation for better outcomes. With Suplari embedded in daily operations, procurement is no longer just analyzing the past—it’s actively shaping what comes next.
Overview
With more than twenty years working at major retailers, including Walgreens and Starbucks—eventually landing at Nordstrom—Karoline Dygas and her team leverage Suplari to enhance everything she does.
To Karoline, global supply chain sourcing and procurement in particular are “in her blood,” and even though she believes she “must be a little crazy to have been in it for such a long time … it’s been a fun journey thus far.”
“I’ve had an opportunity to focus on maximizing value for an organization by really looking at processes and how we could optimize and simplify them and how to really leverage digital tools and technology to make everybody’s life more efficient, which ultimately provides the value organizations are seeking. It’s been a really fun journey, and I’ve done some amazing things with some great companies.”
Providing More Value at Nordstrom
At Nordstrom, Karoline’s primary objective has been to increase value by enhancing efficiencies, eliminating waste, and shifting her team’s focus from transactional tasks to strategic initiatives. This approach is built on the alignment of three key elements: people, processes, and technology.
“You can have great people, but if processes are not good, it’s not going to work.”
Karoline emphasizes the importance of integrating these three spheres seamlessly to ensure success. She highlights how advancements in technology have significantly shaped both people and processes in recent years, providing opportunities to “offset inefficiencies and truly maximize the potential” of her team. “If you have great people and good processes, but the tools that are needed to do it are not good, it’s not going to work either.” “There are some really fun tools out there that allow you to do this in ways we couldn’t have imagined before.”
How Suplari Enhances Internal and External Relationships
When Karoline joined Nordstrom, she quickly recognized the importance of having clear, actionable insights to drive change and create value within the organization.
Reflecting on her early experiences with Suplari, she shares how the platform provided essential spend visibility and empowered her to elevate procurement to a more strategic role.
At Nordstrom, Suplari has been instrumental in elevating procurement to a more strategic level by providing actionable data and deep insights. With Suplari, her team gained access to reliable, real-time data that they could “slice and dice in various ways,” enabling meaningful discussions with internal stakeholders.
Suplari also revealed insights that many stakeholders weren’t previously aware of. “We were able to dig deeper and obtain additional insights that they might not have even known were possible to gain.”
This transparency has strengthened collaborations with both internal teams and supplier partners, paving the way for more informed and impactful decision-making. “Suplari really made my beginning journey at Nordstrom that much easier. In order to make change, you actually need to see what is going on. From that, we could then create our strategies and ultimately unlock the value in an organization that has been around for a long time.”
“Building relationships is all about trust. And to have that trust, you have to have factual, repeatable, succinct, and meaningful information that you can share—and even spark discussion.”
Customer-Focused Insights Through Suplari
Sourcing and procurement at Nordstrom strive to meet the needs of both internal business partners and external suppliers.
Karoline emphasizes that success hinges on understanding others’ needs and fostering a collaborative mindset. By building strong partnerships, her team ensures procurement bridges business units and suppliers, driving shared goals and mutual success.“The pie is not one size. You can actually make the pie bigger if you try enough and have the proper attitude.”
Suplari has played a key role in supporting Karoline’s mission to create impactful change.
“Suplari gave us the tools to truly understand our spend—who the suppliers are, what we’re spending with them, and who within the company is engaging with them.”
This visibility allowed the team to craft strategies for improvements and unlock value within a long-standing organization.
Access to real, actionable data has been pivotal. With Suplari, the team can analyze data from multiple perspectives and provide fact-based insights that build trust and foster collaboration. These discussions often reveal unexpected insights, helping the team better understand how decisions and supplier relationships affect overall spend.
Data Integrity and Trust
Suplari also ensures data integrity. “You have to make sure your data is clean, readily available, consistent with what you see. And I think that Suplari does a really good job with how the data is represented and that it is consistent. It’s consistent from month to month and from year to year.”
Karoline emphasizes the importance of being able to rely on the data. “So then you have that sense of ability to rely on it because it’s something you trust, and you know it’s going to provide the information that you’re familiar with and that is trustworthy.”
A Final Word on Suplari: Maximizing Procurement ROI with Actionable Insights
With a tool like Suplari, Karoline emphasizes starting with the core problem it aims to solve—in this case, achieving visibility into data.
For many organizations, data alone isn’t enough; it must be actionable, repeatable, and easy to visualize to inform decisions. Suplari provides this capability, allowing Nordstrom to analyze spend, identify supplier relationships, and uncover opportunities for strategic sourcing.
This insight has been critical in developing sourcing strategies that address challenges like overly complex supply chains or single-sourcing risks.
Another key benefit of Suplari is its user-friendly design.
The platform did not require significant process changes but instead enabled the team to create new workflows that delivered additional insights and value.“When I first opened up Suplari, I knew how to use it right away.”
By simplifying complex data and empowering teams with actionable intelligence, Suplari has supported Nordstrom’s goals of reducing waste, improving workflows, and making smarter business decisions across procurement.
