What skills are required today ?
The roles and responsibilities of the purchasing population are changing rapidly…
The biggest challenge today in Purchasing and Procurement is to find talented people who are able to develop purchasing strategies in line with the business drivers of their company.
The ‘Big Picture’ : a pre-requisite in Purchasing organisations today is to give a clear vision of where purchasing is going… Purchasing requires high level people who have a full understanding of the ‘success model’ of their company and are able to determine and explain clearly, the value-added that Purchasing offers to the company.
Having people with the right skills and mindsets is essential.
Procurement also requires people capable of taking full ownership of new types of approaches and tools and more especially accept that old working ways and habits are not necessary the best.
Buyers are change agents.
Processes and methods : in most companies today, there is a real need for the harmonisation of purchasing tools across sites. More importantly, these techniques must be built into a powerful process that is commonly recognised and used by all involved in procurement to analyse needs, evaluate and rationalize the supplier base and develop the future supplier strategy.
People in Purchasing must also have the ability to break down costs and implement cost-reduction plans with suppliers. Supplier-Relationship Development which allows the constant improvement of supplier’s performance is also an integral part of purchasing professionals’ daily responsibilities. The clear objective is to develop and implement supplier strategies which will constantly offer improved quality and service, enhance innovation capture and improve ‘speed-to-market’ whilst constantly striving to eliminate all non value-adding costs from the system.
Another vital ingredient of the purchasing team is leadership. Purchasing requires people with the necessary communication skills and charisma to enable their companies to rapidly optimise purchasing in a multi-sites, multi-cultural environment.
The success of purchasing organisations depends on the capacity to exploit the huge potential that exists today through the a total optimization of Human Resources. The purchasing team must be composed of people of different background, based upon the roles and responsibilities involved and hard skills required, but also based on different personalities and soft skills…
But we think that a common ingredient should be…passion… a real passion for business, for the company, its people, its products… which give people the desire to move things forward and the will to improve existing situations continuously.
Mais nous faisons le constat depuis longtemps qu’il devrait exister un dénominateur commun … la passion… une vrai passion pour l’entreprise,
sa culture, ses produits…
We really believe that ‘passion is the key to sustainable performance’.
