The Procurement profession has so many people out there who are constantly doing deals, gaining insight on the best rates, the best ways to structure contracts, and real life experience of managing suppliers. Our entire reason d’etre is to ensure value for money.
I’m a process person at heart. Don’t switch off! Not the most glamorous statement in the world.
Throughout my career I’ve looked at technologies across the end to end “Source to Pay” process. I’ve witnessed endless keynote presentations about the usual procurement challenges and still wonder why we’ve never really been able to crack the upstream side of market intelligence.
There are more and more benchmarking tools out there, which is great. There are multiple sources of white paper information that you can use to gain insight on the market.
The thing is, the best intelligence is the one that’s in people’s heads. Based on experience, and more fun to digest than reading another report that might not quite give you the insight you need.
Back in 2012 I led a strategic change initiative across 10,000 of my colleagues. In short it involved both the use of collaborative technologies as well as a cultural shift to encourage people to share knowledge and build stronger more effective teams.
Ultimately it was about tapping into people’s heads for the greater good of the organisation.
Roll on more than ten years and I see a huge opportunity for anyone and everyone who works in Procurement.
We all buy stuff.
We all do deals.
We all have insight which could hugely help each other out.
Procurement is a unique profession. One that adds an unprecedented level of value to the bottom line.
Let’s connect with each other and share that insight. We’re all actively encouraged to leverage our network. So let’s reward each other for the knowledge we can share to help each of our organisations out.
I want to build the expert network for Procurement. One where as individuals we are financially rewarded for helping out our peers. It might take some time, but I really think if we connect the dots we can build a network that helps us buy better together.
At a recent workshop I attended this little phrase came up.
“Someone out there has all the knowledge you need, you just have to find them.”
Let’s start building a network that truly helps all of us out.
