Three steps for increasing the value of procurement professionals

Originally appeared in Fleet Owner

During the last decade, procurement has been evolving as it tries to play a more strategic role in businesses. As we are at the beginning of a new decade, it seemed fitting to look at its potential impact.

In the report Procurement in 2020: A New Decade and a New Era, Joe Payne, Corcentric’s senior vice president of source-to-pay, offered three fundamental tenets procurement professionals need to keep in mind.

• Generate a high return-on-investment: Procurement professionals need to demonstrate that “more than any other area of the organization, procurement has the capacity to drive dollars to the bottom line.”  He says the elements that need to be measured and leveraged include streamlining processes and policies, making it easier to follow a process than to buy off-contract, responding to business needs and driving value.
• Create a competitive advantage: “Yes, we should make it easier for our companies to buy what they need to support business, but we should also be looking for ways to make it easier for suppliers to do business with us,” Payne said. When you build relationships and engagement with your suppliers, they will be willing to do things for you that they won’t do for other companies where they don’t have strong relationships.
• Be a leader, not a follower: Payne said that part of the job of the procurement professional is to be a business enabler. “When procurement is done right, we are leading the decision-making process. Whether it be helping IT/marketing or other business functions build requirements that align with industry standards and business goals, providing market intelligence that would help outperform competitors, or building sustainable procurement and supply chain strategies that will help the world as well as the bottom line, we won’t be seen as a leader unless we become one.”