I hope that you have enjoyed the article, “5 Types of Procurement Expertise.”

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My main goal with the article was to give some perspective about how broad one’s capabilities must be to be successful in procurement today.  I think that the article did that.  But…

Are there only five areas of expertise that a procurement professional must have?

Nope!  There are even more.

I can think of at least one more right now:  business acumen.

In our online Express Course series, “Procurement KPI’s & Business Acumen,” we share a definition of business acumen from the Financial Times.  An excerpt from that definition is “[b]usiness acumen is keenness and speed in understanding and deciding on a business situation.”

Some of the smartest people in the world don’t have business acumen.  They wouldn’t be able to come up with a way to increase an organization’s revenue or market share.  They wouldn’t be able to grow profits at will.  They wouldn’t be able to develop a new strategy that can take a business to heights it never achieved before.  They can’t talk to a senior executive on the same level and have an equal, mutual respect for each others’ ideas, concerns, and hopes.

Business acumen is a unique type of expertise.  One that is increasingly being required of procurement professionals.

As you can see, being a successful procurement professional isn’t being good at one thing, like knowing how to get an invoice approved for payment or even executing a sourcing process on time and without challenges.  It’s many things.

How many of these areas of expertise are you working to improve?

Hopefully all of them.

Recommended Reading

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Increasing Procurement’s Credibility With Stakeholders