Carlos Almendros is the Senior Global Travel Manager for Cisco Systems, Inc. (DJIA: CSCO), the global leader in the design and manufacture of consumer electronics, networking and communications technology and services. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Cisco has more than 65,000 employees and annual revenue of US$40 billion as of 2010. Carlos leads all travel and card activities for Cisco Systems, supporting Cisco’s procurement activities globally. He has extensive strong experience in supplier management, has led the return to travel strategy for Cisco Systems partnering with key internal stakeholders and ensuring Travel suppliers are up to speed with its strategy and priorities. Strong internal partnerships with Sales enable Cisco to leverage those insights both internal and external Almendros is busy now transforming Cisco Travel category in preparation for the “return to travel” Over the last 12 months developing sourcing strategies and implementing RFX for global projects including travel management company, corporate lodging and air transportation. Projects included policy and technology review, implementation of best practices in demand management and application of industry metrics to quantify delivered savings. Almendros recent accomplishment was leading Cisco change from Oracle I-Expense and Sabe Getthere travel solution provided to 70K employees over to an integrated E2E SAP Concur solution. In an environment where different technologies were being used by 70K employees for booking business travel and expense it created multiple inefficiencies, poor controls and unhappy employee experience. In 2019 Almendros lead multiple teams to help deploy SAP Concur in over 65 counties. Over 800K Expense submissions and 500K Reservations the implementation took 9 months to complete decommissioning two systems and enabling a E2E solution diving greater compliance, improved experience. Carlos also recently managed the Cisco Global Procurement Operations, overseeing the supplier management of Accenture and evaluating Ariba Smart sourcing, contacting and catalogue solution. Prior to this role, Almendros worked as a European Service Delivery manager for a large corporate travel company. He lives in the UK with his wife and two young daughters.