One of the characteristics of 21st Century procurement is status anxiety. Barely a week goes by without another article or blog bemoaning stakeholders who don’t appreciate the strategic contribution professional buyers make to the organisation. Admittedly I’ve been around the profession for while – starting out as a buyer for
Someone raised an important question about what should a newcomer to the procurement profession be thinking about, if they wish to make a splash in joining the function. Here’s my top five tips: Be humble. Learn from everyone. From your colleagues in the function and from other stakeholders. You’re going
You lead a procurement function. You worked your butt off in 2017 to hit your savings target, and improved supplier performance through your SRM efforts. Those SRM efforts stretched to improving your key supplier’s business operations, and you secured the lion’s share of the benefits that accrued from that support.
This little Twitter exchange piqued my interest, and I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the subject. My interest is two fold: (1) Can cleaning service providers be effectively managed through SRM/SPM? and (2) a ‘systems-thinking’
I’ve been asked to present to the local girls’ school on the subject of a career in procurement. It’s essentially a talk offering career advice to sixth-formers who are thinking about university and career options. This is the presentation I’ve prepared. If you have teenagers (or even older children, or
In this excellent article from DILF “Procurement at a Crossroads – Disrupt or be Disrupted’, Soren Vammen, CEO of DILF and Lars Bjerregaard Mikkelsen, Professor at Aarhus University, make the case for procurement to become, not ‘strategic’, but actually and genuinely relevant to their organisations. They suggest CPOs focus on
In part 1 of my SRM leadership challenges, I defined the first three being around implementing successful SRM programmes. Let’s continue with the remaining two. Challenge #4: How to establish a consistent and repeatable way of working so that you can begin to predict future value potential Once you are clear about
This new series on ‘the necessary and sufficient components of successful SRM deployment’ (published initially on the excellent Spend Matters website, and now replicated here) now focuses on ‘Leadership’. It’s one thing to read the research, the chapters on SRM in one of the many volumes on procurement practice, or indeed follow commentators
This is a new series on ‘the necessary and sufficient components of successful SRM deployment’ (published initially on the excellent Spend Matters website, and now replicated here). This introductory piece covers some familiar territory, but it’s my intention to go deeper into each of these ‘components’ and provide practical guidance
“If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.” (W. Edwards Deming) When it comes to the consideration of supplier management, I find the quote above from Deming perfect, as it lays down a fundamental challenge to the CPO to think beyond
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