Do You Have A Procurement Community? You Should!

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Hi readers,

Big milestone for the newsletter today… 

For the first time ever, I’m handing the Sunday Night Note pen over to a writer that isn’t me… Scary… 😱

A few weeks ago I made a call for contributors and was surprised by the response. There are more passionate and opinionated ProcureTech experts out there than I thought!

While I will keep writing a majority of the content, I want to open this platform up to additional voices and perspectives. I know this will make our conversations richer.

While I will still edit every note, you’ll start seeing contributor posts periodically.

On that note, Matthew Hardin is jumping feet first into the fire today. With over a decade of experience in procurement management roles and a recent switch to the software provider side, he’s got a great perspective on what it takes to be successful with ProcureTech.

Onwards!

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 💻 Webinar: Procurement 4.0 - Future Insights (sponsored)

• 📋 5 procurement jobs that caught my eye

• 🏆 The Road to the ProcureTech Cup : Episode 12

• 🌙 Do You Have A Procurement Community? You Should!

Tap the poll at the bottom of this email after reading.
It helps me ensure I’ve not yet turned into a mad scientist…

Note: Some of the content above is only available in the email version of this newsletter. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free to get the next edition.

Episode 12 : The Journey Continues…

Join me next Friday as Canopy comes on the show to demo their Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) platform.

Canopy is all about making your supply chain and supplier data accessible, understandable and manageable with all stakeholders in your organization.

Last Week’s Episode

The Focal Point demoed their Strategic Procurement Platform last Friday. Lots of great banter too!

If you missed it, I’ve made ALL the replays available for you on YouTube:

What is the ProcureTech Cup? Start Here.

Do You Have A Procurement Community? You Should!

by Matthew Hardin

Us procurement practitioners have always had an operating problem.

As business flows, and grows, procurement teams are tasked with driving change and left feeling stretched between two seemingly incompatible mandates:

1. Compliance, with control, visibility and predictability as measures of success.

2. The expectation of procurement serving as a steward to the business - building relationships, listening, and influencing with the goal of safely procuring the goods and services that our stakeholders need to be successful.

I believe it is possible to combine these two conflicting mandates into a coherent, unified and optimized operating model which leads to effective procurement outcomes.

How am I so sure?

I’ve lived it!

It all starts with understanding two cornerstones of procurement:

1. Change. This is not a procurement-specific element but a reality of business. Macro-economic factors, technological advancements, even leadership personalities introduce ever shifting objectives that trickle down to individuals or teams then tasked with orchestrating change.

2. Community. Procurement is a uniquely multi-faceted business function. Success is largely dependent on complex interactions between communities of users, cross-functional stakeholders at all levels of the organization and suppliers.

Therefore, tapping into communities is the key to being successful when rolling out your inevitable change efforts.

But how does one “tap into communities” exactly?

Enlisting End User Communities for Ongoing Feedback Loops

Our workplace is a community – individuals connected by goals that should align around common objectives and values.

We should treat it as such… Procurement should live and die by “internal client” satisfaction.

This means we need to regularly ask end users, down to the most infrequent users, if they are satisfied… And we need to get them comfortable enough to tell us the truth…

To build this trust, consider establishing a procurement community for your end users. ALL of your end users…

If someone in the business feels concerned by procurement in some way, shape or form, they should be in your community. The more, the merrier.

The French poet and aviator Antoine de Saint Exupéry said "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea."

If you can craft a compelling vision of procurement, gaining buy-in from as many people as possible, you will unlock an organic movement that will enhance your ability to deploy change initiatives.

Before you start a periodic “all hands call” for your procurement community, carefully craft your “why” statement:

• Why are you doing this? (hint: you want procurement to work for users)

• Why are you asking them to participate? (hint: pushing out updates and gathering feedback on an ongoing basis)

Then, invite everyone with a system access to a procurement system. Attendees will filter themselves out.

Democratizing change is scary…

It means more time to invest, more feedback to deal with, and less control over information.

However, this additional effort translates to processes, policies and technology that users adopt as they see their input and interests reflected in procurement.

Users will see processes and technology created by “by the people, for the people” (instead of “big bad corporate”).

This will naturally help overcome apprehension to engage and adopt changes…

But you’re not done there!

Formalizing Cross Functional Prioritization Committees

Once you’ve got your community in place, translating feedback collected from user communities into action is where your prioritization committee comes in.

Engaging functional groups and influential team members is critical to repeatable, scalable change making. I failed to recognize this early in my career in it cost me. My effectiveness was crippled.

My early vision of procurement was through a singular, immature lens.

Mature organizations must have cross-functional teams responsible for understanding interdependencies across the business as it pertains to systems, process and policies. These teams must be fed a healthy diet of user feedback, and take action on it. 

If this framework doesn’t exist at your company, don’t worry!

Establishing a prioritization committee or tapping into an existing framework is easier than you might think.

Start with this:

1. Recruit department decision makers with a stake in the procurement cycle who are willing commit to making procurement more effective for their teams.

   Use your why statements, along with basic logistical information (dates, time commitment, expected deliverables, etc.) to clarify your ask.

2. Propose a foundational charter for the prioritization committee

   Need a place to start? Try optimizing spend, reducing risk, and improving operational efficiency - three key pillars we can’t resist.

3. Ask questions, be curious. listen to learn, then execute.

With a regular meeting cadence, you’ll build consensus around the next steps required to execute on the common vision. You’ll bring proposals to the committee and they will help you prioritize and shape them to maximize adoption on the ground.

When your stakeholders get the hang of it… They will also organically start bringing proposals of their own over and above community feedback… Just watch!

The result of putting both these regular meetings in place?

Consensus change. Key stakeholders, end users and procurement all aligned on the details of how to execute the vision.

Everyone working together towards procurement excellence. 

Are you leveraging these types of committees in your organization? What other tips would you share? Let me know in the comments 👇

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