Opella and Candex: simplifying spend, maintaining control. October 14, 2026 Candex's Jeremy Lappin and Opella's Lyvio Frimat discuss how their partnership simplifies procurement by streamlining tail spend management When Opella separated from pharmaceutical giant Sanofi in May 2025 and became an independent consumer health business, its Procurement Operations Lead, Lyvio Frimat, now Vice President - Global Head of Procurement Centre of Excellence, Strategy & Transformation at Opella, had worked with Candex previously. "Because of our initial association with Sanofi," Jeremy Lappin, Co-Founder and CEO of Candex, explains, "they had a lot of confidence to do things quickly and powerfully with Candex." New business, new procurement functionality. Opella inherited a procurement landscape built for a global pharmaceutical company, not an agile standalone fast-moving consumer healthcare (FMCH) business. Tail spend was fragmented and largely invisible, and hundreds of low-value, one-time transactions were absorbing team bandwidth and creating compliance exposure. Candex, a platform that helps large organisations manage and pay small and one-time vendors, offered a way to bring that segment under control without waiting for the wider source-to-pay architecture to mature. For Jeremy, it was "a very unique situation where Candex is part of the core strategy" of a newly independent company. For Lyvio, the partnership with Candex is helping his team "solve a problem most procurement transformations ignore until it is too late: how do you bring the entire spend base under governance without bringing the entire organisation to a standstill? The answer isn't more process - it is smarter architecture." Frictionless control. A core strand of Opella's solution to reduce procurement friction is to separate tail spend transactions from strategic, more complex procurement contracts. With Candex, Opella's supplier onboarding, payment terms and compliance standards stay "within a clear governance frame - while removing the process burden" that stifles procurement efficiency. Opella's users notice. One requisitioner told Jeremy: "It was so easy, I thought I did it wrong." Candex, he says, is there to enable: "Our job at Candex is not to exist. It's to sort of sit in the background." Beyond efficiency. Coupled with its newly deployed "Agentic Vertical", Opella expects three wider benefits from the partnership with Candex. 1. Spend that was previously off-system or wrongly routed to Candex will be captured upfront and made reportable, feeding its value tracking and analytics. 2. Colleagues who once worked around procurement will have a frictionless route inside the governance framework, while procurement professionals can move from processing tail transactions to strategic, relationship-led work. 3. The partnership also supports Opella's ProcureTech ambitions. Candex is designed to handle engagement and payment without approved suppliers entering the core ERP unnecessarily. "You have to automate the tail to make orchestration work," Lyvio explains, "and Candex is precisely what will be making that possible." 'It's always about the people' For both Jeremy and Lyvio, the partnership's success ultimately comes down to people and mutual understanding. "It's always about the people," Jeremy says, praising Opella for managing the Candex project "at the very highest levels," while Lyvio credits "shared clarity" for the partnership's success, which enabled Candex to operate reliably within Opella's governance architecture. Ultimately, "a partner that makes your governance stronger earns a place in your architecture," Lyvio says. The next phase. Both teams are exploring higher-risk, traditionally unmanaged spend, such as payments outside purchase order processes known as maverick spend. Opella also sees scope for deeper analytics integration, growing volumes from AI-assisted sourcing, and a better supplier experience as it builds its supplier relationship management framework. "There's a lot of opportunity in some of those areas that are currently considered unmanaged spend," Jeremy says. For Lyvio, the partnership is still evolving. He says: "We are on a journey. We've been accelerating quite a lot in the past months, and by the end of December, it's going to be totally in execution." Did you know? Executives. * Jeremy Lappin Founder and CEO * Lyvio Frimat Global VP | Head of Procurement Excellence, Strategy & Transformation Company Portals

Procurement LIVE: Opella fixes broken processes with AI. September 09, 2026 Lyvio Frimat, Vice President and Global Head of Procurement COE at Opella, warns against "marketing AI" without fixing core operational models first Procurement leaders are navigating a period of unprecedented digital disruption, but true progress requires addressing a fundamental mindset shift. "Senior leaders fear AI," declared Lyvio Frimat, Vice President and Global Head of Procurement Centre of Excellence (COE), Strategy & Transformation at pharmaceutical company Opella, during a session at Procurement LIVE: The London Summit, a BizClik event, today. "Most of the time when we do implement AI, it's not because we wanted to do it, it's because at some point it was a top-down decision." For Lyvio, this anxiety stems from a form of FOMO - not just the fear of missing out, but the fear of being missed out. Recognising this anxiety is the first step toward building operating models designed not for current executive tenures, but for the next generation of digital-native talent. Earning a seat at the table. In many organisations, procurement continues to fight for executive visibility, but Lyvio believes that effort is misplaced. "Procurement is indeed becoming strategic, but we don't own a seat at the table," he said. "We become strategic by the time when people are around the table, they start a conversation and then stop and say, 'Hey, where's the procurement guy?'". Achieving that level of influence requires moving past surface-level technology adoption - what Lyvio provocatively calls "marketing AI". Most of the time, Technology Magazine is putting a pot of flour on top of a very bad smell - Technology Magazine think it's going to work, but most of the time it fails. Technology Magazine will never be able to fix processes by putting tools in to replace them. Lyvio Frimat, Vice President and Global Head of Procurement Centre of Excellence (COE), Strategy & Transformation at Opella Getting your hands dirty. Deploying digital tools over broken processes yields predictable failures. "Most of the time, we are putting a pot of flour on top of a very bad smell - we think it's going to work, but most of the time it fails," Lyvio explained. "We will never be able to fix processes by putting tools in to replace them." Instead, procurement teams must build deep technical literacy to understand how systems function and what operational shifts are required to support them. "The hard way is sometimes to have your hands in the dirt, understanding the technology," he noted. To drive this transformation effectively, Opella structures its strategy around rigid operational foundations where governance comes first, backed by human intelligence alongside AI rather than the reverse. Under this framework, the entire procure tech landscape is directly owned by the COE team to ensure that every technology choice tightly aligns with the overarching architecture. By keeping humans firmly in control, automated agents manage standard operating procedures while human experts handle complex exceptions and focus on high-value decision-making. By fixing core operating models first, procurement moves beyond basic cost savings to unlock total value contribution - surfacing risk mitigation, supplier innovation and long-term capability building. Building the agentic procurement COE. Moving from theoretical strategy to practical execution requires redefining the relationship between enterprise technology and human expertise. At Opella, the Center of Excellence (COE) enforces strict process standards before layering software over operational workflows. Rather than treating AI as an end-to-end replacement for human judgment, the organisation uses digital agents to process standard operating procedures, data verification and routine compliance checks. This structural hierarchy ensures that human experts retain full visibility over edge cases and strategic vendor negotiations. By elevating procurement teams from transactional oversight to governance leads, organisations eliminate executive friction and establish sustainable, audit-ready operating models suited for the next generation of digital-native leaders. Key Opella brands. * Allegra: A leading non-drowsy antihistamine brand used globally to treat seasonal allergy and fever symptoms. * Buscopan: An antispasmodic medication widely used to relieve abdominal pain, cramping, and IBS symptoms. * Doliprane: A household paracetamol brand in France, used for pain relief and fever management. * Dulcolax: A widely recognized over-the-counter brand providing targeted constipation relief solutions. * Mucosolvan: A popular respiratory health brand offering cough relief and mucus-clearing treatments. Company Portals