Chris Friedl, senior director of enterprise supplier management, started with Capital One 20 years ago as an IT contractor, eventually moving into risk management and then into vendor management with the Card Technology division. There he became interested in finding a better way to use offshore labor. He restructured and reduced the program from three suppliers to two, effectively saving $20 million in spend. In 2015, he led a project to select a new VMS and implement an MSP. More recently, Friedl found ways to streamline the system so that a single approval serves as a user’s contractual and financial approval, making the process more efficient for the user and saving both headcount and spend.

“I gravitate to the CW space,” Friedl says. “[I like] the human element and the strategy around work design and how to use human capital in organizations.” He notes that the CW program at Capital One supplements associate hiring and keeps countless projects alive. Its positive impact on the company is easily quantifiable: over the last five years, the bottom line spend has been reduced significantly, and onboarding and time to fill have both decreased 25% to 30%. Friedl states that bringing in better talent at a lower price point has contributed to the business’s ongoing success, and he is interested to see where the next five years will take the industry.