Frans Barends

Frans Barends is the Chief Procurement Officer / Sr. Director of Procurement & Business Services at the Georgia Institute of Technology, managing Procurement, Accounts Payable, Travel, Insurance & Risk, Assets and Logistics. While at Georgia Tech he led broad organizational and process changes in concert with system implementations including a full eBusiness Procure-to-Pay SciQuest Suite, electronic Travel and Expense, Integrated Imaging storage and workflows, eSourcing, electronic vendor registration and Spend Analytics.  Georgia Tech achieved an exceptionally rare 100% Federal Audit score on the recent Contractor Purchasing System Review (CPSR).  Georgia Tech is now engaged in a Workday implementation.

He is a focused on continuous improvement through process change, organizational redesign, systems enhancement with the focus on “best in class” systems and processes.  He has conducted ERP implementations and upgrades with PeopleSoft and Oracle and multiple eBusiness, P2P and Imaging Systems.   Currently he is working on the Georgia Tech Workday implementation team. 

He has cross industry experience in Supply Chain and production having worked in the Military, Food, Energy, Capital Construction and Higher Education.   After military service, he worked at Hershey Foods, Aquila Energy, MA Mortenson and Dartmouth College before coming to Georgia Tech.

Frans has a Bachelor of Sciences degree from West Point in Engineering and Economics and served in the United States Army in Europe, the Middle East and United States.   He was awarded 2 Bronze Stars during Desert Storm and has the CPSM and lifetime C.P.M. certifications and is a Six Sigma Green Belt.