Cris Buningh (Past Speaker)

Cris has built his profile as an all-round Global Commercial Executive and Thought Leader throughout a career revolving around commercial leadership, business consulting and change. Starting with a degree in Physics and an MBA, he spent the first 15 years of his career in line and program roles in Exxon. He honed his business skills in commercial line management as well as in program management roles redesigning and realizing new businesses and processes. As a high-potential he was privileged to assume a variety of management responsibilities contributing to his development and these were complemented by a number of global leadership programs. In all roles his energy, rapidly acquired content knowledge and leadership have delivered outstanding results. Stimulated by the success in Esso business redesign programs, he made a switch to business consulting. He combined delivery of large change programs at international corporates like Philips, AkzoNobel and Shell with becoming a thought leader in e-commerce and strategic performance management. Having the deep business knowledge in Oil & Gas and the commercial leadership he was asked to lead Atos Origins O&G industry sector and manage the Global Shell account. He successfully managed the business development, sales and delivery of IT Services in this market and for the “office of the chairman” Shell account. The success was noticed by CSC who poached him to lead the development of the global Shell account and several strategic large scale bids. In the CSC role Cris helped Shell develop and test their Global Supplier management methodology. His knowledge of and passion for managing business relationships led Shell to offer him a role as Senior Supplier Manager and thought leader in their procurement function. In this role he significantly enhanced the value Shell gets from Professional Services and consulting suppliers and realized a turnaround of the relationship with SAP. In the General Manager role Cris assumed early 2014, he became globally responsible for procurement of all Professional Services categories with a total annual value of ~5B$. In this role he was able to leverage all the skills and experience he acquired in Commercial Strategy and Management, Business Relationships, People Development and Organisational Change to drive a step change in supplier value to Shell, realized record savings and dramatically improved the way that Shell manages contractors and IT resourcing. Most recently Cris has founded consulting company B-CEPS, which provides strategic advice to Clients and Suppliers in the Professional Services domain. In this role Cris is able to leverage all his experience and network to help companies achieve Commercial Excellence in this domain