Talent, Skills and Tech in Emerging Markets – Nolan Menachemson from Nolan School

Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast! This is sadly the last episode in our mini series, where we ask industry experts and influencers about everything happening in the digital procurement world.   Talent, Skills and Tech in Emerging Markets - Nolan Menachemson from Nolan School   For this episode, we’re going all the way to Australia, where my guest today actually has his own procurement school.  His school has a really noble mission: To make procurement education affordable to students.  So a very warm welcome to Nolan Menachemson from Nolan School.   02:00  We open up by talking about Nolan’s mission to bring procurement education to as broad of a base as possible.  In particular, we highlight the need for such accessibility when it comes to developing countries.      04:44  How technology has impacted and enabled Nolan to reach more students. We consider that 10 years ago, it was barely possible to have a stable Skype call, let alone host a group webinar online.   05:31  Automation of entry level positions, and the impact this is going to have in the future.  We also discuss the digital divide, and just how different life is for people who don’t live in developed countries. Focusing on the MIddle East, for example, the challenges faced there are very different to our own, and we have to get our heads around that.   07:36  Some of Nolan’s students don’t even have electricity in their houses. So there’s a huge gulf of things that we might take for granted that these people just don’t have. That gap needs closing before we can even begin to talk about cutting edge tech.    09:08  The absolute importance of mobile phones in the developing world.  There are so many users out there who will never own a PC, but many of them have a mobile phone.  As such, mobile represents a crucial frontier when it comes to unlocking the talent currently siloed away in developing countries.    10:32 We talk about communications infrastructure challenges, using Papua New Guinea as an example. Some countries seem to have entirely skipped the step of installing efficient broadband, and insteadleapt right from copper cables to wireless internet.    12:56  The increasing prevalence of remote or hybrid work, and the critical role tech plays here.    14:09 Everything as a service, the Internet of Things, and the implications of moving aware from the PC as standard.    18:11   The critical role of technology in compliance, and how this helps reduce exploitative practices like slavery and child labour.  We talk about Prewave, and their AI tool that scrapes news sources and social media accounts to back up compliance.   19:23