Today’s article is the first of two articles from a report that we recently published, entitled, Five Transformative Strategies to Unlock More Procurement Value, sponsored by BravoSolution and available for free download by clicking here.
The current generation of procurement professionals has witnessed first-hand a period of unrivaled advances for their profession as market forces and new technologies combined to pull procurement to the center of business operations and business results. But in 2015, many Chief Procurement Officers (“CPOs”) and their departments find themselves at a crossroads, struggling to maintain their momentum while the speed and complexity of their businesses continue to accelerate. And, while the foundation of procurement’s future will be built upon the past, the strategies and approaches that drive new successes will be markedly different. This report looks at the transformative strategies that will unlock procurement’s next wave of value.
In 2015, more and more CEOs talk about procurement because they interact with their CPO and the function more directly and to a much greater degree than just a few years ago. In fact, Ardent Partners research shows that, today, slightly more than one in five (22%) of all CPOs report directly to the CEO. That means that more often than not, procurement leaders must work to earn their access to the top of the organization with crisp execution and the delivery of consistently strong results. The good news is that CPOs and their procurement departments are better equipped to gain this access and support the strategic objectives of the CEO and the overall enterprise than at any other time in history. This has been driven, in no small part, by the development of more advanced procurement capabilities and the utilization of powerful process automation tools, which can support a wide-range of business objectives. These are the same tools that helped ignite, in the late 1990s, the broad-based transformation of the procurement profession that continues today.
Soon, however, the need for procurement to do (and deliver) more will take on a whole new urgency – the accelerating speed and complexity of business will demand it. As impressive as the advances made by the procurement profession in recent years have been, any deep examination of procurement and business trends makes clear that the tried and true strategies that traditionally took a “command and control” approach to both suppliers and spend will soon begin to yield to more proactive and highly collaborative methods. There is, after all, a difference between managing (or influencing) spend and managing it well. Transformative strategies designed to leverage the collective resources and capabilities of stakeholders, organizations, and trading partners will be the keys to procurement’s ability to unlock more value in the future.
What are these strategies and how do they advance the CPO’s agenda in 2015 and beyond? Tune into Part II of this article series as we take a close look at each. In the meantime, interested readers can download our report by clicking here.
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