[Editor’s Note: We continue our “Flashback” series with another look at a past entry on the skills needed for today’s procurement leaders.]
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: Business Consulting Skills
What are Business Consulting Skills?
At CPO Rising, we often discuss the marriage of people with processes and technologies. Business consulting skills are where all three converge. Let’s begin by looking at people skills, which include: asking smart questions, active listening, developing a sense of the scope and depth of the problem at hand, and helping others solve problems. Solid business consulting skills also include managing expectations with clients, building consensus, and getting results.
They also involve processes – or managing processes via effective project management skills. These include: scoping projects, assigning tasks, setting benchmarks, monitoring progress, analyzing and mitigating risk, and other project management steps.
Procurement professionals also have to be able to analyze supply markets and data, which can mean leveraging process automation tools to analyze and manage spend and suppliers completing the people, processes, and technology trifecta.
Importance to the Procurement Department
Business consulting skills are effective tools for procurement pros who are responsible for managing their company’s spend, but rely on internal clients (e.g., business stakeholders and other functions) in order to succeed. Since procurement often lacks the authority to force an internal client to cooperate, it has to rely on its staff to influence company budget holders and get their buy-in. For example, procurement professionals work with budget holders on projects to source what they need. Having good consulting skills will:
- Help them define scope
- Manage the project
- Capture requirements and translate them into a clear RFP for suppliers
- Analyze supply markets, and
- Provide greater customer service
Collaborating with internal stakeholders, making their lives easier, and providing great customer service while you do it will (1) help ensure project success, and (2) help win repeat customers.
Importance to Career Advancement
Having the full suite of business consulting skills – working well with people, managing projects and processes, and being tech savvy – will get you far in your career. Finding a well-dressed problem-solver who can influence without authority and knows his or her way around an analytics suite can be harder than you think, and companies pay premiums for this blend of talent. As one CPO told me a few years ago, “We have gone out of our way to hire effectiveness. We looked for people with prior consulting experience, good analytical skills, and a strong client focus – people who can manage projects and present well.”
The CPO’s Grade
The “Business Consulting Skills” competency received a C- from CPOs, meaning that their staffs are below average when it comes to using business consulting skills. This is a wasted opportunity for procurement teams, as those with business consulting skills can influence internal clients without real authority over them and better position the procurement team (and company) for success. Whether companies develop the talent they have or recruit better skilled, better-rounded staff, it behooves them to increase their business consulting bench strength.
How to Improve
Knowing that the average procurement department has below average consulting skills (and an appetite for premium talent) should motivate younger procurement professionals to start bulking up on these skills. Depending on one’s comfort level and proclivity, people skills can either be the easiest or the hardest to improve. Collaboration is a major business driver today, as we’re increasingly reliant on others to move the ball down the field reset the chains. But not all of us have it in us to win friends and influence others, at least not immediately. For some, it can be a slow, uncomfortable process. But for others, it can be as easy as picking up the phone and saying, “hey, let’s grab some coffee and compare notes.” Practice makes better, and that goes for learning how to work with and influence people without authority.
Conversely, project management, data analysis, and tech skills can be learned and honed on the job, or by enrolling in professional development courses. As I’ve said before, companies will often sponsor classes or training that directly relates to your position, so be sure to ask about it. There’s even a Groupon for online project management courses (Note: this is not an endorsement of that class), and I’ve seen similar offerings for other business courses. Of course, if you’re a people person and would rather meet with clients and problem solve, learning tech can be just as uncomfortable. But whether you’re tech savvy or people savvy, you’ll be better off stepping outside your comfort zone and gaining new skills. Comfort zones can be limiting; and while breaking out of them can be uncomfortable, it’s at that very moment where growth occurs.
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