Over the past 10+ years working in sourcing, procurement, supplier relationship management, accounts payable and reconciliations, both on the finance and the IT side, a number of themes have begun to emerge in my thinking.
1. The role of procurement should be to facilitate rather than manage. HR serves as a good model. The HR department (typically) doesn't want to manage your staff: their role is to facilitate your management of your staff. They do this by providing the systems for recruiting, on-boarding, payment, development and termination of staff. Likewise, procurement should do the same and leave supplier management to the key users of that supplier.
2. Flexibility is more important than size: In most categories, the age of volume buying and long term contracts with set specifications and requirements is over. The role of the procurement professional should be to assist their organisation in increasing their speed of response to new opportunities rather than locking their organisation into massive deals at cheap unit costs.
3. More to come
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