Without having done some of the work technical people in the company do, it’s hard to understand their challenges and pressures, and hard to convince them that you know what you are talking about when you give advice. Procurement needs a solution...
"If you’ve never built it, how can you buy it?"
That was a rhetorical question posed by one participant at a recent Procurement Leaders Roundtable on ensuring the delivery of procurement value in the future. The speaker was referring to the need for actual experience in certain technical categories in his industry. Without having done some of the work technical people in the company do, he said, it’s hard to understand their challenges and pressures, and hard to convince them that you know what you are talking about when you give advice. It’s an observation that can apply to some extent in non-technical areas as well. And, it brings us to the issue of whether actual category experience will be more important than procurement experience in procurement organizations of the future.
The answer is “no.” But, on the other hand, it isn’t less important than actual procurement experience either. The best procurement teams are and will be composed of people with a blend of experiences, as another Roundtable participant asserted.
You can help staffers develop their procurement skills by the guidance you provide and the training opportunities you make available. Mentoring is an especially good strategy.
For the category experience, one good way to ensure that staff have the specialized knowledge necessary to successfully provide sourcing and other procurement advice to engineering, marketing, legal and other functions, short of recruiting from those functions, is a system of job rotations.
Procurement Leaders’ research report “Upskilling Procurement” says that rotating people in and out of other functions develops a broader business perspective and more technical expertise.
Most leading CPOs have broad experience in other functions, and encourage development of skills in areas outside procurement. Kimberly-Clark is one company where several procurement executives have experience in multiple fields. And that broad exposure to other functions can help procurement executives land other jobs in the company’s executive hierarchy. For example, Rick Jacobs, president of Eaton Corporation’s Hydraulics Division for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, formerly was Corporate Vice President of Supply Chain, and before that held engineering and technical management positions at other companies.
The broad exposure from job rotation can help procurement managers think more like business people. And that mindset, already important, will be absolutely critical in the future.
from Procurement Leaders Blog http://ift.tt/1KwM09O
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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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