Beyond purchasing

12 A strategic role? | Section I
Supplier risks
Supplier continuity
69%
Commercial
64%
Brand
31%
Currency
30%
Environmental
22%
Health and safety
22%
Other/ Don’t know
8%
0 8
16 24
32 40 48 56 64 72 80
% of respondents
and cannot add value involves
overcoming set attitudes.
Marielle Beyer, Category Team
Leader, External Professional
Services, Zurich Financial, notes “we
need to apply our subject matter
expertise to add value and better
support the business.” Ng Sui Guan,
Vice President, Commercial Supplies
at Singapore Airlines, agrees: “To
work effectively with my business
partners, we need to add value to
what they are doing. Once they see
that value, then procurement can play
a more strategic role in helping them
achieve their objectives.”
At the same time, others caution that
procurement can’t be the expert on
every product that the company
needs to purchase. Byrne explains
that “most people in a company think
that they’ve had many years’
experience and that they are really on
top of what they are doing. We,
though, have hundreds of suppliers
with thousands of solutions. There is
no simple single answer to how to
harness that.”
Jeff Gallant, Vice President,
Procurement at Bell Canada, has the
opposite challenge. “We have to be
careful that the business units don’t
think we are the absolute experts.
Sometimes they expect us to be, and
that can cause discontent. We can
provide good market intel and
research, we just don’t have the
detailed domain expertise as we are
process experts. You have to set
expectations properly.”
Professor Richard Lamming, Director,
University of Southampton, School of
Management, goes slightly further:
“I don’t think there is a hope of
procurement being seen as advisors
on what to buy. Instead, as markets
get more difficult, there is going to be
a role for somebody who can say
‘here is the macro picture’, and
sometimes to say ‘what you want is
unavailable and here are alternatives’.”
Once such understanding of where
procurement can truly add value
spreads through the organization, the
benefits — both in terms of strategy
and savings — can be striking.
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