Articles Tag: procurement skills

The future of your career

Published: By: Andrew Daley

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

Procurement Leaders – The Talent Attraction Reality

Published: By: Andrew Daley

We attend a lot of procurement conferences and events and as a result we hear a lot of CPOs talk about their businesses, their priorities and their objectives.One of the common themes is the attraction and retention of talent.

In a recent report on the Future of Procurement by SAP Ariba they quoted some interesting statistics: 63% of procurement leaders do not have an established talent management strategy. The main barriers to achieving organisational efficiency enabled by digital procurement are:

Lack of data – 23%
Budgetary restrictions – 19%
Lack of internal talent/knowhow – 17%
Shortage of external talent – 13%

So when you combine the two figures for talent shortage (internal and external) you get 30% which effectively makes it the biggest barrier to organisational efficiency.

So CPOs are making all the right noises about the importance of people but what is the reality?

Or to put it another way, is procurement making savings or adding value in the recruitment process?

Procurement has gained significant savings in the recruitment category over the past 15 years. The implementation of PSLs and the leverage of the company’s buying power yielded easy wins. But with many recruitment companies now operating at tight margins the opportunity for further savings seems limited.

In light of this Procurement needs to add value to the business in terms of supply of recruitment services. Rather than view recruitment as a commodity to be bought mainly on price is there opportunity to find value? Let’s not forget, barely an annual report is published without a CEO reminding us that ‘people are our greatest asset’. So why is such a business critical category reduced to the lowest common denominator?

The commonplace commoditisation of recruitment is underpinned by the binary perception that a vacancy is simply either filled or not filled. Therefore it is just a question of filling the position for the lowest possible cost. To move away from this view requires insight in to time to hire and performance of the new recruit over a sustained period of time.

The first variable is easy to measure but a little harder to evaluate, particularly for highly specialist positions where the potential candidate pool is small. For example it’s unreasonable to compare time to hire for an office based admin position, where the candidate pool is huge, to time to hire for a rare skill set position, where only a handful of relevant candidates exist in a given geographical region.

Nevertheless, the recruitment supplier’s ability to find and place candidates as quickly as possible undoubtedly has a clear value to the hiring company, therefore should be part of the supplier selection criteria.

The second variable is the performance of the new recruit over a period of time. Anecdotally, most senior managers will know who their star team members are and who are only just meeting the minimum performance requirements. However, turning this into quantifiable data is a real challenge. And how often does the senior manager trace back the origins of the high performer in terms of which recruiter sourced the candidate, and then use this information to influence the choice of recruitment supplier going forward?

The typical PSL based contingency recruitment supplier arrangement serves to reinforce the commodity view. By instructing, say, three agencies on a vacancy using the ‘no placement, no fee model’ urgency is created amongst the suppliers. This helps minimise time to hire as the agencies race to ‘win’ the fee but incentivises the suppliers to submit only candidates they can access immediately rather than seek the best possible fit for culture and performance potential which may be a little more time consuming. In other words the long term value to the business may well have been sacrificed for speed.

Much is made by forward thinking procurement leaders of supplier relationship management. By forming a true partnership with suppliers they can create an opportunity for collaboration and innovation that benefits both supplier and customer. Examples cited often come from the procurement of components or raw materials but could this extend to recruitment services?

We have written many articles on how companies can improve their talent attraction, streamline their selection processes and get a deal done with the right candidate. Our knowhow and experience has the potential to be a game changer for a customer looking to be better. Will procurement embrace that opportunity?

The Future of Procurement Part 1

Published: By: Andrew Daley

This article is an excerpt from our Spring 2018 edition of The Procurement & Spend Management Insider.

At the recent eWorld event a number of the presentations attended by our team made reference to the issue of the procurement profession fighting to move on from the savings dominated agenda to make a meaningful contribution in the other areas that procurement leaders covet. This has long been a discussion topic at many procurement events. Regular readers of this report will know that Edbury Daley is passionate about working with clients who are committed to recruitment best practice. Our clearly stated philosophy is: We recruit for companies that need the best talent in procurement technology and spend management, companies that take their recruitment seriously and invest in finding the right people.

However, if we look at our own experience of when procurement departments formally drive the selection process for recruitment suppliers, a high percentage of tender processes are still completely tactical in their orientation. We believe many were poorly thought out and were clearly savings focused to the exclusion of any real opportunity to add value. There is a lot of talk about talent attraction as a priority in all the CPO surveys from the leading consultancies, but the reality is often different. This contrasts with our positive experience of working with technology companies offering procurement solutions.

Vendor management is also typically poor. Recruitment processes are often lacking agility and are rarely designed around talent attraction. The golden rules defined from our research are consistently broken by many major organisations. The reality is that it’s all about the savings for most companies. So in this section we consider three of the opportunities that exist for procurement to prove its value beyond cost savings and the skills required to do it.

They are:
1. Brexit
2. Procurement CSR
3. Technology & The Procurement Skill Set

BREXIT

At the recent eWorld event Andrew Daley chaired a discussion workshop entitled “Preparing for Brexit – Changing demands, skills and supply chains.” The session was fully subscribed with delegates from a wide variety of sectors. We expected a lively discussion about Brexit contingency planning across the audience. What we actually found was that most delegates worked for organisations who had done little or no planning, and were attending to find out what everyone else was doing. Their reasoning was perhaps best summarised by this: “We are taking our lead from politicians so we’re not sure what to plan for. We are likely to get a transition period, so we’ll deal with it then.” Thankfully there were some interesting contributions from those that have engaged in some meaningful contingency planning.

Labour mobility was the area that had received the most attention so far in this particular audience. One delegate from the biotechnology sector mentioned that 70% of his organisation’s labour are EU nationals. They are understandably concerned about this. His organisation is exploring what that will mean for their ability to manufacture and distribute post-Brexit. He also talked about EU funding post 2020 – that’s their other big concern as well as losing top scientific talent to EU member states. But not that there’s much the procurement and supply chain can do about that.

Another delegate from the FMCG sector made reference to a high percentage of semi-skilled EU labour in their operations being a major concern for them. A delegate from a major financial services company talked about them working to engage EU employees to promote greater loyalty in key parts of their customer services operation. The most comprehensive planning had been done by the aforementioned FMCG company and we were fortunate to have their procurement leader in the audience. He offered the following insights into their planning.

They had analysed the various different potential post-Brexit scenarios, weighing and ranking the options in terms of the likelihood. The options ranged from a U-turn seeing the UK stay in the EU, through to a hard, no deal Brexit where we crash out onto WTO regulations. They have ranked a free trade agreement after a transition period as the most likely option giving it a 50% likelihood. Their worst case scenario was a diamond hard Brexit which they ranked at 10% likelihood. It is that particular potential outcome that has been driving much of their contingency planning. Interestingly the procurement leader in question has been attending a number of supply chain conferences to research and assess the approach by companies facing similar challenges. He concluded that those with goods coming in from the EU to be sold in the UK are doing the most planning. One notable FMCG company supply chain leader had confided in him that their planning for a hard Brexit included moving their operations out of the UK. A common view from others went something like “it’s not a problem, we’ll just hold more stock,” but it was pointed out that if you haven’t done any planning how are you going to find that situation in 2019/20. The problem with waiting for the transition period is that you’ll be at the back of the queue for things like extra storage space and it will undoubtedly cost more given rising demand.

This is an opinion backed by commentary in recent articles in the CIPS magazine Supply Management which focuses on the likelihood of suppliers raising prices in response to the crippling cost of Brexit. One survey said that 32% of firms have already increased prices whilst another survey shows that 41% of respondents plan to increase their prices “to offset the potential costs of Brexit.” In another article entitled Analysis and preparation key to tackling Brexit Supply Management observes that Mark Chadwick, director of business services for consultants Fusion 21 said: “Although uncertainty caused by Brexit had made it harder for teams to control costs, early stage analysis would help businesses prepare for any circumstances.” He is quoted as saying: “Putting a lot of effort now into understanding the wider environment your suppliers are working in and what’s affecting them and what pressures they are facing will best prepare you for what you might be asked in the future.” “We found that if you don’t do that analysis and preparation you’re often going to find that you’re on the back foot and that you’re really starting to react to situations as they emerge rather than being proactive and trying to manage those situations.”

There is a different view of course. At eWorld Andrew Daley asked one experienced procurement practitioner in the audience, who has an established consulting business, what his clients were doing to prepare. He offered the view that many aren’t sure what they are planning for so why devote resources to it? For some, they view the transition period as an opportunity to make the necessary changes and many view the whole scenario as “Y2K again” as he put it. It was fascinating to hear the views of people working for companies taking a view at either end of the spectrum on this subject and it’s something we’ll continue to monitor through conversations across our network and by attending industry events. Our view is that Brexit offers a unique, once in a generation change which is likely to have huge impacts on international supply chains. It, therefore, offers both procurement and supply chain professionals an opportunity to have real influence in areas that go beyond savings. Why not take that opportunity to move procurement and supply chain up the boardroom agenda? We also asked the audience at eWorld if procurement professionals need to develop any new skills to deal with these changes, but we struggled to generate any meaningful contributions on the subject. We have been asking ourselves at what point in time will we start to see roles that focus on Brexit contingency planning.

If or when it does happen what skills will they require? The approach of our FMCG leader mentioned above is perhaps the most interesting example so far that of modelling the various scenarios, allocating resources accordingly and then researching and preparing to act. It should also be noted that this particular leader is attending as many professional events as he can to learn as much as possible from his peers and then passing this learning onto his team.

Is it time to get yourself to the next procurement or supply chain professional conference?

In Part 2 of our Future of Procurement series of articles we’ll review Procurement CSR and whether procurement can be a force for good. And if you’d like to read the full Insider report you can download it here.