Procurement transformation.

Don’t miss updates on Procurement & Supply Chain, Subscribe here!

It’s a line item on every procurement executive’s list of objectives.

Successfully complete a procurement transformation and you’re a hero with an impressive addition to your resume.  Fail and then you’ll be one of those people with “seeking new opportunities” as their title on their LinkedIn profile.

One of the important things to realize in the beginning of a procurement transformation is what it is and what it isn’t.  And what a procurement transformation isn’t is an exercise of doing a better job at the things you do now.

No, what a true procurement transformation involves is adopting best practices.  Some of those best practices replace what you do today.  Some of those best practices add to what you do today.  But if your organization needs a procurement transformation, it’s likely that best practices aren’t a mere tweak to what you’re doing today.

So, you should not be starting your procurement transformation by asking “What can we do better?”

You should be asking “What are we not doing that leading organizations are?”

Trust me, if you explore what you’re not doing through benchmarking, you’ll see that there is no shortage of articles, books, training, consultants, and other resources available to help you come to know what you don’t know.