Procurement is changing rapidly and the big question is: whether the skillsets of procurement professionals are changing just as quickly?
Procurement is changing rapidly and the big question is whether the skillsets of procurement professionals are changing just as quickly?
With a third of procurement leaders members reporting being in the midst of a transformation projection, it’s a logical step to say that new projects, especially those which are aiming to achieve something that has never been achieved before, require something to be done differently and to do this well new skills are required.
Whether the project is related to eProcurement or enhancing procurement’s role internally, all of these projects can benefit from an internal assessment of talent capability, to ensure that each stage is deliverable. Still, this is easier than it sounds, which is why functions often come unstuck in delivering ambitious transformation efforts.
The people that got you where you are won’t necessarily get you where you’re going. With so many projects focused on innovation and new strategies focusing on both internal and external stakeholder management, the skills to insure these projects have measurable, demonstrable ROI are a necessity. Projects for example with ambitions such as to move away from a category-orientated procurement function, to one that is client orientated undeniable requires a different skill set to what’s gone before.
Most CPOs will agree that a lack of negotiation skills is not the most pressing problem, to say the least, and is now seen as the core of many procurement professionals’ skill portfolio. This is because as function teams have spent years investing and honing where they perceived the greatest saving could be achieved, they became masters of contract negotiation.
Take the example of a newer strategy such as moving toward a client-orientated approach: this requires a completely different skillset from that of a traditional buyer or manager, both at a strategic and tactical level. Accordingly, procurement practitioners need to be able to sell the function to other areas of the business, including finance, to sell the value generation potential of the function and to promote the ways in which they can encourage innovation —soft skills, then, become crucial.
Where do teams get these new skillsets from? With around 60% of procurement using mentorship, it’s clear that there’s recognised advantages in passing those down.
But others are looking further afield, whether this is from internal secondments or external secondments to other partnered companies using staff exchange programs. Alternatively external training resources can often offer excellent specialised and structured training with defined outcomes and relevant skills (the Procurement Leader’s Academy is one such option). These sources can provide an injection of new skills, which the mentoring system so desperately needs.
Ensuring your procurement strategy runs parallel to the continued alignment of competencies within your procurement function and its objectives is key to being successful in achieving targets and retaining innovators.
The onus, now more than ever, is on CPOs to plan accordingly to have a talent pipeline in order that matches that of the transformation projects running simultaneously, or be faced with teams that do not have the ability to reach the lofty visions of the function’s future.
This article is a piece of independent writing by a member of Procurement Leaders’ content team.
from Procurement Leaders Blog http://ift.tt/1HXaS99
This content was assembled for you by the YQ Matrix platform
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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