Is Procurement The Same The World Over?

While each market has its nuances, the fundamental challenges for executives are surprisingly similar from New York to New Delhi. 

Of course the challenges of an executive at a Chinese chemical company, say, are quite unique from those of a counterpart in a German insurance firm – but if we ignore the parallels, we risk skewing our view of the world.

This realisation was brought home to me in a recent trip to Australia to host roundtable discussions in Sydney and Melbourne. I’d been advised that, given the constrained nature of some of the supply markets and the difficulty of attracting top talent to that corner of the globe, the conversation might naturally lean on topics and problems that European or American teams had focused on years ago.

Not a bit: it’s been my experience that for all the idiosyncrasies of a market, the fundamental challenges are the same and the biggest factor that dictates where a function assigns its focus is the interest and engagement of the senior management. You might be in Melbourne, Monterrey or Munich; if your CEO ‘gets it’, you play a completely different role than if you have to be constantly pushing to win over internal stakeholders.

It’s easy to counter this anecdotal view with research – and there’s plenty available – that shows that supply risk might be more of a consideration in one geography than another, or that supplier diversity is more of an issue in the US than it is in Eastern Europe; fine, no argument. Still, here are three underlying strands that I think show why we shouldn’t undersell the value of what procurement has in common.

Creative procurement can happen anywhere

Whether it’s engineering the relationship with your strategic suppliers to open the channels to receive innovation from them, or creating collaborative schemes to develop suppliers and ensure compliance, teams the world over have shown the appetite and ability to think around the problems of their industry. We see it highlighted again and again during Awards season, perhaps more so than we ever see in headlines or annual reports; procurement the world over houses some talented business minds and when they can break out of the cost-centric mindset, they can deliver huge efficiency and top line value.

Cost…value…governance…the cycles are the same

Wherever you are the conversation around the route to stakeholder value is a familiar (tiresome?) one. It’s not like in jurisdictions outside of yours, large corporations are still working out how to negotiate. Procurement is constantly in flux, constantly transforming in order to align with what the respective organisations are doing. Whether that’s moving to centralised/decentralised/centre-led or rebranding procurement or even installing new software and processes, the activities are often continuous – there is no final solution that one group of CPOs have reached that another group can learn from. Everyone’s on the same treadmill, some are just fitter than others.

Talent will out

The main limiting factor to the progress of a function, besides an enthusiastic and enlightened(!) C-suite is people. That message has been voiced time and again and although that might be felt more sharply in some locations than others, it’s always a competition and always demands creative approaches to attracting new talent and developing prospects. Likewise, no market has the monopoly on smart business minds that can turn their talents to procurement. The recent winner of the Procurement Leader Award, Kylie Towie showed that sometimes a leader in the Australian public sector can be just as impressive as an executive in a multi-national multi-billion corporation.

from Procurement Leaders Blog http://ift.tt/1F5RX5m
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The views expressed in this post and throughout the series are the autor's own and not intended to reflect the views the YQ Matrix platform, its users or any associated organisations.

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