The Future of your Career – Part 1 – This article is the first in a regular series from Andrew Daley offering career development advice and sharing learning resources. Whilst aimed at procurement professionals with a desire to embrace the new era of digital procurement, this series should prove valuable to anyone seeking professional guidance on protecting the future of their career.
“Procurement faces a wake-up call as tectonic shifts in technology threaten to completely alter the function, leading eventually to its automation.” (Source: The Future Of Procurement Technology by AT Kearney).
This quote was the first slide in my presentation at the Basware Connect event in October entitled “Climbing the career ladder in an automated world”.
At SAP Ariba’s Procurement Summit a week earlier, one of the clear themes of the day was that the profession has a unique opportunity to change itself with the technology available, but it has to take responsibility to further its own agenda.
My conclusion from the two events was that the profession can’t wait and allow change to happen to it – it has the embrace the opportunity and dictate its own agenda.
Whilst on stage myself at the SAP Ariba event, I talked about the lack of spending by CPOs on training budgets as outlined by recent research from Deloitte. So my message to audiences at both events was to take personal responsibility for their own development, as it’s up to them to embrace the opportunity for the future of procurement, individually and as an entire profession.
So I’ve decided to continue this theme of developing yourself, or as one of the delegates at Basware put it “self education”, with some regular guidance on personal development that I hope will help you take advantage of all the resources available now, rather than waiting for your employer to invest in appropriate training.
People who take action now will give themselves a significant advantage over those that don’t next time they enter the job market.
This month I’m going to start by sharing what I consider to be some really useful learning resources for those seeking to understand more about the digital procurement revolution.
It’s no secret that I’m a big fan of the Spend Matters website. It’s the ideal place to stay appraised of developments in the technology and thought leadership on the skills required for the future of procurement. I’d advise frequent visits to the site. Alternatively you should follow them on Twitter for regular updates on their excellent content.
Their writers do a great job of cutting through the hype and getting to the crux of the matter. They also keep readers updated with dates for the wide variety of procurement conferences and events which they attend themselves and then write useful reviews.
If you want to dig deeper yourself and have the time, there’s a vast amount of “thought leadership” available on the evolution of procurement. The leading management consultancies and software vendors are particularly fond of publishing research and opinion so it’s well worth registering for white papers from the likes of Deloitte (here’s the 2018 CPO Study) and AT Kearney. Hackett Group has also produced some good reports on digital transformation.
Amongst the software vendors there are always plenty of learning resources available online. Some are quite salesy, while others try to be more educational. SAP Ariba’s Procurement 2025 is a particularly good one, and talks about the golden age of procurement. You can access it here.
One of the benefits of registering to download this content is that you’ll get updated when they publish new content and potentially get invited to their events. I’m a big advocate of attending these conferences. They are a great opportunity to hear about best practice from the profession’s leaders and learn about the power of the technology available now, and in the near future. They also offer a great networking opportunity which might prove invaluable next time you are in the market for a new job!
Of course, social media is another way to find all this sort of content. You don’t need to be particularly active on the various platforms if you don’t like them, you can still gather useful information when it suits you.
Much as we love LinkedIn, the more people you connect with, the more noise and irritating Facebook style behaviour you are exposed to. This reduces its effectiveness as a news source in my opinion.
One way to address this is to use its group functionality effectively. By joining relevant groups you are able to refine your content and focus on areas where the information is more relevant to you.
There are lots of good procurement options to research. We’ve assembled a great community around the procurement tech’ market which you are welcome to join here: Procurement Technology Specialists
You should also take a look at Procurious if you haven’t done so already. They are a much more specialist resource for procurement pros. They are doing a great job of promoting developments in the profession through their “Big Ideas” initiative. You can register as a digital delegate for their forthcoming Big Ideas Summit in Zurich here.
This is what they’ve had to say about this event:
“For the first time ever, we’ll be filming and streaming the entire day’s event via the Digital Delegates group on Procurious. If there was ever a time to register for one of our summits, it’s now. Featuring presentations and interviews from some of Europe’s top procurement leaders, we’ll be discussing procurement and supply management towards 2030, the future of talent, automation, blockchain, diversity and so much more.”
I hope you find some of this content interesting, hopefully even inspiring, and it will help you to start thinking about the future of your career more if you haven’t done so recently. We’ll be looking at other subjects such as further education and training opportunities as this series develops, but I’d like to finish with a couple of points from me.
A great lesson I learnt a few years ago when Simon and I started the business was to “begin with the end goal in mind”. So I’d advise that you start by developing a vision of where you see yourself career wise in say five or 10 years. Then try to work out a plan for how you are going to achieve your goals using all the resources available to you in the modern world.
Finally, some thoughts on what I’m going to focus on myself for my personal development. At the aforementioned Basware event I particularly enjoyed the keynote speech from respected “Futurist” Rohit Talwar. He’s inspired me to look further into the future about what’s next in business technology so I’ve just started one of his books – The Future of Business.
Here’s one of his presentations on YouTube – he’s well worth watching.
Also having really enjoyed my recent public speaking engagements I’ve decided it’s time for us to take the next step and do some video content for our website for the first time. I’ve challenged my colleagues to join me so watch out for our vlog debuts in January. Filming starts just before Christmas. Should be an interesting challenge!!
My next article in this series will be in January. Please let me know if you’ve got any questions that you would like me to address (confidentially of course!!!) via andrew@edburydaley.com I’m also interested to hear about what you are doing in terms of your professional development.
Alternatively follow us on Twitter or Linked In.
If you’ve found this article useful, you REALLY need to read our Procurement & Spend Management Insider report. It’s designed to give you an insight into the employment market conditions for your skills, so it really would be remiss of you to miss it! You can register to download the latest edition here.
Andrew Daley
Director, Procurement & Spend Management
