Event takeaways: Putting words into action

Key actions

• Advertise the versatility of procurement roles and demonstrate how spending time in the function can help fast-track career development. This makes procurement stand out as a viable career destination – a true general manager of business.

• Prioritise investing in technology to automate high-volume, low-value tasks. Enabling staff to spend more time on higher-value activities will ultimately enable procurement to deliver greater business impact.

• Rotate staff to build their business acumen, widen the talent pool and develop the consultative skills procurement professionals require to be strategic business partners. Although many functions have struggled to achieve this, Maersk has demonstrated it is possible.

Key actions

• Use data to encourage accountability and drive behavioural change. EY has developed dashboards for staff that highlight compliance with travel policies and present CO2 emissions from journeys so it can reduce travel costs, increase transparency and improve sustainability.

• Leverage your supply network to access data or sources of innovation when budgets are constrained. Adam Baird, senior EMEA procurement manager at S&P Global, says it is possible to leverage the innovations of suppliers that are working with other customers on exciting projects.

• Prioritise procurement digitalisation projects that benefit both procurement and the wider business. Marco Romano, procurement data and analytics officer at IBM, says he disregards projects that do not deliver outcomes for both.

Key actions

• Encourage stakeholder engagement by ensuring purchasing processes do not slow time-to-market or stand in the way of innovation. Although cost savings are important, stakeholders may consider R&D support or supplier-enabled innovation to be of greater value.

• At the start of any project, meet with stakeholders to discuss the details and decide on budgets and expected outcomes. This will ensure procurement staff have a greater understanding of the business’s objectives – both at a category and a functional level.

• Category managers and buyers must have the courage to challenge stakeholders and question whether what they ask for is truly what they need. Instead, procurement professionals should offer alternatives based on their market intelligence.