Six months and here we are again, eWorld September 2017. I am sure that for the rest of the team at Market Dojo it felt like a bout of Deja Vu having gone for the past 6 years but for myself, this happened to be my first trade show since starting here earlier this month.

Luckily, this time around we stayed in a hotel the evening before so missed the 4am start which I believe is the traditional Market Dojo eWorld routine.

So starting the day feeling fresh at sunrise, we headed down to the QEII Centre in Westminster to set up for the day. I worked my marketing magic to make the stand look pretty great (if I do say so myself) on time for delegates arrival at 8am.

We had the privilege of being situated next to two of our close partners stands Provalido and Per Angusta.

The brilliant Claire Boffey who organises the popular event bi-annually, ensured all the sponsors had free bacon rolls to prepare us for the big day ahead. Unfortunately, for vegetarians like me, this meant sampling lots of chocolates from various stands which gave me the perfect opportunity to gain an insight into other competitors and procurement solutions on the market.

I think for ‘newbies’ like myself, it was interesting to see the range of people which attend the event. Not everyone is there for new opportunity it seemed, which surprised me (just there for CIPS points!) however the ones which were, showed just how applicable Market Dojo is to the market, as many procurement teams are so stuck in old ways and could benefit massively from using a tool to eSource.

The talk given by Interserve, our client for over a year now, grabbed everyone’s attention. The representatives on the day, Kevin Davies and Mandeep Chana, Spoke about changing behaviour through technology, such a popular choice of topic that the room had to be upgraded to a larger space (We hope this had nothing to do with the “free biscuits” title given in the pamphlet!)

Interserve gave an honest talk about their experience of implementing an eProcurement solution, explaining their hardships along the way with software, communication and processes. However choosing the right supplier was fundamental to their success, yep that’s right… us (MARKET DOJO) and Per Angusta.

Our prize draw for a free month licence for Market Dojo was drawn from a hat by Pierre from Per Angusta and Pete from our sales team. Our lucky winner this time, was Kunal Khanderia from Hilton Hotels.

As the day appeared to come to a close, we had some of our best conversations with people who were really keen to learn more about the world of eSourcing and also some of our other products such as category analysis. This went down very well with a glass of white wine to finish a fun first day at eWorld.

Finally! (nearly finished I promise) before heading off back to Gloucestershire, we went for my cuisine of choice, Italian at Colosseo just a 5 minute walk from the QEII centre for some real food (by that, I obviously mean pasta) before another day back at the office!

If you didn’t get the chance to come to the event or missed us for any reason and think Market Dojo could have been of interest to you, don’t hesitate to get in touch for more information or try out our free sandpit tool here!

Market Dojo helps procurement professionals negotiate better with our on-demand eSourcing tools. If you’d like to find out more, get in touch or register for free and play around with our software for yourself!