What the Best Procurement Pros Do (and you should too)
If you’ve worked in and around Procurement you know there are a few types of Procurement Professionals.
You’ve got the I don’t care Professional. Calling these people Professional is a stretch of the imagination and an insult to the true procurement Professional. These are the type of Procurement people that fell into the job and are bitter about it. There’s no hiding that many people do not grow up wanting to get into Procurement. It just kind of happens. I’m sure many of you reading this right now have a story to tell as to how you got into procurement.
The problem with the crowd that is bitter about it is that they are doing a lot of harm to the Profession. They are typically the argumentative type who fight non-existent battles as everyone plots to bring them down. It’s a fabrication. These people believe that their role is to place POs and send emails and that’s about it. What is worse is when one of these Procurement People are placed into a role of more responsibility and they lead their team into the depths of their bitterness.
All is not lost if you’ve felt like this.
All is not lost if you’re working in a team that operates this.
I’m going to talk to you about what the Best Procurement Pros do and why you should emulate this in your career.
Alignment to the Business
Let’s start off with what poor Procurement Professionals and Teams do. They create barriers with the rest of the business. They fight their own agenda that does not align with what the Business wants.
"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." --Andrew Carnegie.
We think this quote is fitting here. Drop the ego and find a common vision with your Business.
The best Procurement Professionals think like Business Leaders. They know what the Business needs and what it is attempting to achieve. These Procurement Professionals know that they are there to be a service provider to the Business. They are there to enable not to put up barriers.
You are in control of this throughout your time in Procurement. Stop putting yourself and your team on a pedestal. You are there to serve the Business to ensure that the Business gets what it needs whilst protecting it from risk, putting good contracts in place and saving the Business money where possible.
Alignment to the Business is a must.
They build trusted relationships with their colleagues outside of Procurement
Trusted Relationships are the life-force of a good Procurement Professional. If you want to become the very best Procurement Professional you’re going to realise you cannot do it alone.
"Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." --Helen Keller
Procurement is the support function within the Business that sees across all the important functions and departments. Getting the requirements out of the door to your Supply Chain is a battle and you need your warriors alongside you. More than that, you need to be prepared. You need to have built strong relationships with your colleagues outside of Procurement to get the requirement right and every other part of the Procurement process right. You need their support and they need your guidance.
Build relationships first. Focus your effort on relationship building over technical know-how.
They simplify all that they do for better results
You don’t need to make life difficult for yourself or your Trusted Business Partners. That makes no sense whatsoever. I’ve personally seen Procurement Professionals, who had the legendary MCIPS designation, belittle and condescend the people who they are serving in the Business, in a flurry of jargon and I told you so type language. It infuriated me.
When I look at this, the reason things go wrong and this situation arose was because they, the so-called Chartered Procurement Professionals had over-complicated their message and their communication was poor. For that reason, they had gone down a rabbit-hold and unlike Alice, there wasn’t a chance that they could come back from it. They didn’t even realise they were in the wrong.
When you work with your Business, use Plain English language to communicate.
Don’t talk about how you reviewed the supply chain using Kraljic and found that this supplier was a leverage supplier who you could negotiate down on price. Just say you know this supplier will have room to budge on price. Keep life simple and your Trusted Business Relationships will thank you for it.
They don’t stop learning
If you stop learning you’ve given up on what you’re doing and living. To learn is to be human and in Procurement, there is a lot to learn.
You need to learn about:
New Suppliers
New Laws and Regulations
That’s a lot to learn and it is in no way covering everything you should be learning throughout your career in Procurement.
How you learn, whether it be through articles like this, Podcasts or formal learning programmes, is up to you and should be your own personal preference. Do more of what works for you.
They focus on supplier relationships as a way to create more value
Just as it’s vital to create Trusted Relationships within your Business you need to do this with your Suppliers. The very best Procurement Professionals know which Suppliers they need to focus on to build relationships with to get the best possible outcomes for their Business.
Work out what Suppliers you should be building relationships. Don’t do this by some artificial metric such as spend value with that Supplier. Think like a Business Leader and get aligned to the Business. In what areas is your Business focussing on and what does the Supply Chain look like in those areas? Focus there to drive significant value opportunities.
If you’ve got some suppliers who you spend a lot of money with the outside of this, or who have a more complex type agreement in place, then don’t necessarily neglect them. Use your internal Trusted Relationships to figure this out.
They are data-driven and use it to make better decisions
There’s nothing worse than making a decision based on little evidence or data. It’s likely to backfire on you.
Hopefully, your Business is or has built up data on its Supply Chain that you can use in your Procurement activities. Use this to understand a multitude of elements about your Procurement activities, the market, risk, your suppliers and put this together to make an informed decision.
There are of course other traits and skills that the best Procurement Professionals have. We could have spoken about the focus on Emotional Intelligence and we’d say that EQ is a crucial differentiator in building Trusted Relationships. We wanted to avoid the phrase “soft skills” as that is the worst phrase possible for what are the most essential skills.
The best Procurement Professionals make things happen. They are pro-active rather than reactive and they work hard at all of this.