Procurement & Supply Chain

The IED Procurement and Supply Chain practice helps executive teams find and capture the value that sits between functions: in supplier relationships, contracts, decision rights, and the incentives that connect them. The practice is led by Meredith Gibbons, Partner, Procurement & Supply Chain, a global procurement executive whose organizations have negotiated more than 3,000 contracts worldwide.

Value Sits Between Functions

Organizations rarely underperform for lack of talent or opportunity. More often, information, incentives, and decision-making stay disconnected across the business, and value leaks through the gaps. Our work makes those connections deliberate, so improvements keep compounding after the engagement ends. Every engagement begins with discovery, because the strongest solutions are built from what an organization already knows about itself.

Three Practice Areas

The practice spans the full arc from sourcing execution to enterprise strategy. Engagements are scoped to the value at stake and the deliverables required, and most begin with a fixed-fee, time-boxed assessment your organization owns regardless of what it does next.

Vendor, Contracting & Supply Chain Consulting. Build supplier ecosystems that reduce risk, increase value, and support long-term growth. Strategic sourcing and category strategy, RFP and RFQ development and execution, contract negotiation and commercial optimization, supplier segmentation and performance management, and supply chain risk, continuity, and dual-sourcing strategy. The result is lower total cost of ownership, stronger supplier partnerships, and reduced operational and geopolitical risk.
Procurement Process & Transformation. Design a procurement organization that scales with the business instead of constraining it. Operating model and organizational design, procurement maturity assessment, supply chain training and development, technology selection and ERP optimization, and KPI architecture and executive reporting. The result is faster cycle times, higher process adoption, measurable value realization, and improved supply chain resilience.
Strategic & Enterprise Advisory. Help executive teams design organizations that unlock value across functions, not just within them. Business ecosystem assessment, operating model and growth strategy, C-suite and board advisory, private equity portfolio company advisory and interim leadership, and value creation and EBITDA improvement planning. The result is increased enterprise value, stronger organizational alignment, and businesses that scale without breaking.

Discover. A fixed-fee, time-boxed way to find out whether there is real value on the table before committing to anything larger, and an assessment you own regardless of what you do next. Typically two to four weeks.
Design. Co-create a custom roadmap your organization will actually follow. Typically four to twelve weeks.
Deliver. Implementation support alongside your team, not from the sidelines. Typically three to twelve months.
Sustain. Optional monitoring and advisory to make sure the results hold.

The Discover phase centers on a Business Ecosystem Assessment: executive and stakeholder interviews, current-state and procurement maturity evaluation, spend analysis and supplier ecosystem review, decision pathway mapping and organizational friction analysis, cross-functional alignment assessment, a quantified and prioritized value opportunity map, and an executive roadmap worked through with your leadership team.

Who We Work With

Our procurement and supply chain work fits organizations that recognize themselves in the following:

Mid-market and enterprise organizations with significant third-party spend and an underbuilt or overstretched procurement function
Private equity firms and their portfolio companies, whether pre-close diligence on the cost base or post-close value creation
Any organization facing a high-stakes sourcing event, key contract negotiation, or critical supplier relationship
New or developing procurement and operations leaders who need a credible 90-day plan and an outside read on what they have inherited

Practice Leadership

Meredith Gibbons, Partner, Procurement & Supply Chain

Meredith leads IED’s Procurement and Supply Chain practice. She is a global procurement executive who has driven large-scale procurement transformation across multinational manufacturing enterprises, strengthening supply chain resilience, sustainability, and long-term enterprise growth.

Most recently she served as Chief Procurement Officer and Board of Management member at PowerCo Canada, the Volkswagen Group battery company, where she built the procurement function from the ground up for a $6B, 90 GWh battery cell manufacturing plant, the first of its kind in North America. She directed more than $4B in global capital procurement and supplier contracts in support of an investment expected to generate thousands of jobs and shape the global electric vehicle supply chain.

Before PowerCo, Meredith spent a decade with Volkswagen Group of America, where she led North American procurement strategy for Volkswagen, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini, and Electrify America. She launched Volkswagen’s Silicon Valley Strategic Procurement Innovation Hub as a global center of excellence and built strategic partnerships with AWS, Cisco, Capgemini, SiriusXM, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Salesforce.

Her procurement organizations have negotiated more than 3,000 contracts worldwide and delivered more than $1.8B in financial impact across $8B of spend. She is a keynote speaker at Technology Procurement Summits and Reuters Automotive conferences, advises government and corporate boards on global procurement strategy, and was recognized by Women in Automotive Network as a 2025 Inspirational Role Model. Meredith graduated cum laude from Southern Adventist University with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management and International Business, and completed international study in Italy.

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