It’s a great and worthwhile pursuit for Chief Procurement Officers to invest in their people, so, in that vein, over the next few weeks we will be analyzing the key skills and capabilities (or higher-level competencies) that a procurement professional (and department) should have in place in order to execute successfully. We will be using Ardent Partners’ Procurement Staff Competency Matrix that we developed with our CPO audience. This competency matrix established industry-wide capability measures for the average procurement organization.

We hope this series will help professionals and their managers to better understand and communicate what the required capabilities are for specific job roles within the procurement department and thereby help identify, develop, and deploy the people with the right skills into the most suitable positions. Professionals can also use this series to better identify where current gaps exist in their organization or within their own skill sets so that they can take action to improve or move into roles with greater responsibility (and pay).

Today’s Competency: Leveraging Technology to Drive Business Value

What is “Leveraging Technology to Drive Business Value”?                         

At its core, enterprise technology is meant to drive efficiencies, effectiveness, and visibility making tasks more manageable, while enabling an organization to scale. Technology can also help us connect the dots to see patterns that we would have otherwise missed, arrive at conclusions faster, or confirm what other sources tell us. Technology is meant to make our lives easier, faster, sharper, and make us better able to solve complex problems. So when companies or procurement teams fail to leverage technology, they’re missing out on all the time, effort, frustration, and opportunity costs that it could have saved them.

But, technology, in and of itself, does not deliver business value. The supply management software software highway is littered with the roadkill of failed technology initiatives. The goal of deploying technology is the ability to use it (technology) to the benefit of the procurement group and the enterprise, and above all else, drive business value. If procurement teams cannot do that, they are better off trying to get really good at manual processes and avoid the distraction and investment.

Importance to the Procurement Department

Since roughly two-thirds of CPOs believe that their procurement departments are short-staffed, the ability to use technology to help scale resources, gain greater visibility, and make smarter decisions becomes a critical competency. Over the past decade, supply management solutions have become more affordable, more usable, and easier to deploy. The procurement teams that are successful in deploying solutions and driving user adoption see, on average, more compelling returns than other functional teams (i.e., HR, finance, etc.) do from their technology investments. Procurement departments cannot afford to wait for the current generation of less tech-savvy staff to retire before using supply management solutions to drive greater value. Deliberate plans should be set in motion this year to improve this capability.

Failing to leverage technology in the business world is akin to running a 10K road race with three-pound ankle weights on each leg: yes, you can finish the race, but you can forget about breaking world records and personal bests. The added weight is not recommended because it will change your stride pattern and put added stress on other parts of your leg. Why run an important race with a significant handicap if you can avoid it? Why take on any added stress? Since there are so many other races to run (improving skills, placing spend under management, getting executive engagement, etc.), why get bogged down here? [And yes, people put weights on their legs to train and get stronger, but not when it’s time to run the final race. Not using technology does not make you stronger or faster].

Importance to Career Advancement                                      

Like data analysis and financial analysis, leveraging technology to drive business value is a must-have skill set in today’s business environment. Those without tech skills will get left behind (or let go) in favor of tech-savvy business professionals with or without formal training. While younger generations will always have the advantage of greater technology assimilation and adoption, don’t throw up your hands and say, “hey, what are you gonna do?” Work is hard enough. Work smarter, not harder.

I’ve heard many business professionals quip somewhat seriously that they’re so tech illiterate that their young children know how to turn on their tablet or laptop but they themselves don’t know how. While this may draw some empathy and a few laughs at your own expense, it advertises your obsolescence and may hasten your own departure from employment. Do yourself a favor and get up to speed.

The CPO’s Grade

Chief Procurement Officers gave their staffs a D+ for “leveraging technology to drive business value”, which means that, although they’re doing it, they’re pretty poor at it. The challenge of aligning processes to systems is a longstanding procurement problem and a top hurdle to success for approximately one in three procurement teams. This is one of the underlying reasons that the average procurement department has difficulty using solutions to drive business value.

How to Improve

In this day and age, there is a not-unreasonable expectation that staffers train themselves on how to use new technology. In addition to taking in-person and online classes to get smart on various technology programs, there are many self-guided ways a procurement professional can get up to speed in the modern business environment. The providers in our industry have generally focused on making usability a priority in their newer versions, but many solutions still require some type of training. New or aspiring users can find a plethora of free or affordable material on the internet in the form of solution provider blogs, user-threads, or YouTube videos. Ask your specific solution ‘power users,’ or the help desk where online resources (intranet or web) can be found.

Also, if your company is willing, ask them to send you to user conferences where you can connect with other users. Or, if your colleagues use the program or suite at work, shadow them as they use it, tap them for best practices, and consolidate best practices into your own informal user guide. There is strength in numbers, so putting multiple minds together to share and learn best practices will add value to your user experience, your procurement team, and your career.

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Tagged in: Chief Procurement Officer, CPO, People, Procurement Competency Matrix, Solution Providers, Technology