Leader’s Corner: Lauren Tennant

Watch now: Interview with Lauren Tennant, CEO and Founder of Horizon Seven Consulting

CEO and Founder of Horizon Seven Consulting and Horizon Seven Training, Lauren Tennant, talks technology procurements and agile approaches.

Step into the world of technology procurement with Lauren-Elise Tennant, CEO and Founder of Horizon Seven Consulting and Horizon Seven Training. With a strong background in the technology sector, Lauren is not just an influencer, she's a procurement guru. Discover what's on her agenda and the unique challenges she faces in her role.

Watch the leaders corner highlights with Lauren Tennant now:

Leader’s Corner insights with Lauren Tennant

Tennant is on a mission to empower technology leaders, like the CIO roles she used to embody, to harness the full benefits of the technology they acquire. Her journey has transitioned from an operational and delivery role to one focused on research, development and business growth.

Key areas of focus differ for a variety of senior leaders. “My job now is to lead the thought leadership thinking around how we develop tech procurement going forward.”

Tennant’s technology procurement journey began with applying agile principles to technology purchases. The journey then evolved to encompass agile contracting. Now, her focus is on the next big challenge: how to seamlessly integrate the acquired technology into the organisation.

“For me it’s all about integration, capabilities for organisations. How do we apply agile thinking and refreshed thinking to service integration and management-type principles?”

The importance of not just buying technology but ensuring that it delivers tangible benefits needs to be emphasised in her view. The next step? Realising value through integration. Agile-based processes enable learning and growth, fostering collaboration with technology partners to co-create solutions, learn, develop, deploy, and quickly realise value.

“Delivering through agile-based processes allows you to learn as you grow. So, more collaborative face-to-face procurement with tech partners enables you to co-create solutions, learn, and develop, deploy and realise value more quickly.”

As CEO and Founder of Horizon Seven Consulting and Horizon Seven Training, Tennant is in a unique position, equipped with a strong background in the technology sector, she is considered a technology procurement guru. Despite her expertise, Lauren faces her fair share of challenges. 

Technology purchases, in her view, tend to lack thoughtful consideration of how they'll fit into the existing organisational framework, including people, processes and structures. Isolated technology acquisitions can fall short of their intended purpose. “You buy a piece of tech in isolation and it doesn’t do what it should do.”

Watch the video interview above with Lauren Tennant to learn more insights from the technology leader and her procurement practices.