Good morning. We interrupt this ‘steady stream of engaging and informative procurement-themed articles’ with this update:

News reports over the Columbus Day weekend that the somewhat boring completely depressing U.S. campaign season will receive an exciting jolt of electricity today have just been confirmed. eSourcing 2.0 has decided to break from tradition and launch an 11th hour campaign to see if it can win the top spot on the Chief Procurement Officer’s “Agenda” for 2013. We take you now to the steps of the Justice Department in Washington D.C. where this historic announcement is about to be made….

We are here today to announce our campaign for eSourcing 2.0 as the policy of choice for procurement departments great and small around the globe. It is our intention to become the top priority on the CPO’s Agenda in 2013.

We all made this journey today for a reason. It’s humbling, but in my heart I know you didn’t come to CPO Rising for the pictures, you came here because you believe in what procurement can be. In the face of inflation, you believe there can be cost reductions. In the face of supply risk, you believe there can be mitigation. In the face of an enterprise that’s often shut you out, that’s told you to settle, that’s divided us from the business for too long, you believe we can attain enterprise-level visibility of spend, reaching for what’s possible, managing more spend, managing it more perfectly.

I’m sure that each of us has seen eSourcing solutions from a number of viewpoints depending on where we’ve worked and what we’ve done. For me it has been as a developer and marketer of the solutions in the bubble years. As a user/consultant during the tougher times; and more recently as an analyst charged with evaluating them.

Someone once said that the difference between a Chief Procurement Officer (or other sourcing/procurement pros) and any other kind of person is that a CPO lives in anticipation of the future because he/she knows it will be a great place. Other people fear the future as just a repetition of past failures. There’s a lot of truth in that. If there is one thing we are sure of it is that history need not be relived; that nothing is impossible, and that procurement is capable of improving its circumstances beyond what we are told is fact.

There are those in our enterprises today, however, who would have us believe that the procurement department, like other great organizations, has reached the zenith of its power; that it is weak and fearful, reduced to bickering with finance over savings calculations and no longer possessed of the will to cope with large problems.

During the next four weeks we will discuss in detail a wide variety of needs which the new eSourcing 2.0 policy must address. Today we will mention only a few.

• The need to increase visibility into sourcing activity
• The need to improve sourcing processes
• The need to capture and retain category, process, and supply market knowledge
• The need to improve collaboration with suppliers
• The need to improve communication with suppliers

We must put an end to the arrogance of the status quo. We must force all professionals to live in the real world of reduced spending, streamlined functions and accountability to the larger enterprise…….. [Editor’s note: we must return tomorrow for the stirring conclusion to eSourcing 2.0’s campaign announcement speech. Remember, “Source or Lose” in 2012]

Tagged in: eSourcing, Source or Lose, Sourcing, Strategy, Technology, Transformation