Procurecon Indirect West 2025

March 03 - 05, 2025

Charen Buyce

Global Indirect Procurement Director
Amway

The people at ProcureCon are always thinking about the future of procurement, not just what we have already accomplished. It’s not just about sharing best practices, but also discussing what’s next, and that’s why we come back year after year.Charen Buyce, Global Indirect Procurement Director, Amway

Charen’s ProcureCon Story At a Glance

  • First year at ProcureCon: 2008
  • How she has participated: Attendee, speaker
  • ProcureCon highlight: Inaugural winner of the Individual Award for Excellence in Purchasing Indirect Categories (EPIC)
  • Why she comes to ProcureCon: The event is forward-thinking, always casting a light on the future of the function

Forward-Thinking and Award-Winning: Charen’s ProcureCon Story

A Focus on Innovation and Topics Relevant to Actual Procurement Practitioners

In my experience, ProcureCon is always relevant and grounded in my everyday realities. The team behind ProcureCon is constantly reaching out to people like me, trying to understand what’s important to us as practitioners. They stay in touch with the changes in the space. The ProcureCon team develops very relevant agendas with interesting topics, and then they bring in the thought leaders who are actual practitioners in those spaces.

The attendees and speakers at ProcureCon are always thinking about the future of procurement, not just what we have already accomplished. It’s not just about sharing best practices, but also discussing what’s next, and that’s why we come back year after year. Procurement will always have responsibilities for cost savings and cost avoidance, but our next frontier is how we continue to help innovate, how we continue to improve the connection between the external world to our companies to drive revenue growth in the future.

The event is very focused on our specific needs. From both an overarching perspective, from the CPO level all the way down to the sourcing manager level, there is always category information that’s being provided and breakout sessions that really give us the opportunities to network and discuss today’s burning topics.

How We Use ProcureCon for Team Building and Professional Development

I love bringing my team to ProcureCon conferences. First and foremost, it’s to have that time away from the office with them to do some critical teambuilding. We always have good conversations about the sessions and discussion panels we are a part of, tying them back to what we do and how we can improve our processes. It builds incredible camaraderie, but it also helps to build out each of their capabilities in their own specific category areas. There are breakout sessions all the time for travel, marketing, IT, or legal, and my team can get very focused in on their specific categories to learn and grow. We see this is a big part of our professional development.

My EPIC Award

In 2008, I won the inaugural individual award for Excellence in Purchasing Indirect Categories, or EPIC. The EPIC awards are a great part of the ProcureCon Indirect experience, because we get to see who is achieving the best possible corporate and indirect sourcing and procurement results, and how they are accomplishing that. It’s a very unique type of recognition in our space.

Winning the award was a validating moment for me – to really see the accomplishments that my team and I had achieved and be able to show that what we’re doing is world class. That was a very nice moment and it’s probably something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

This has been a great opportunity to share, just as people have shared their strategies with me during the early parts of our journey. The peer-to-peer network at ProcureCon is great, and you have the credibility of peers talking to peers in a collaborative environment.

Innovative. Intimate. Collaborative. This is ProcureCon.

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