Monthly Top 5 - May 2024

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This month, I scoured through 1000+ articles from 40+ sources to bring you the best free procurement articles published in May.

📰 In this month’s edition of the Top 5:

• No. 1 - Structuring your Procurement team for Innovation

• No. 2 - How to Build a Sourcing Strategy

• No. 3 - The Multiple Faces of Sustainable Sourcing

• No. 4 - Decision Intelligence Applied to S&OP

• No. 5 - Where Are the Optimization Quick Wins?

What was your favorite story this month?

Rate this edition at the bottom of the email and tell me in the comments.

No. 1 🥇

The Procurement Org Structure for Innovation

This month’s best article is an interview with Schneider’s Vice President of Global Procurement, Srinivasan Ramakrishnan, explaining how the company’s Global Procurement Capability Centre is structured and operated.

It’s a great inside look at “what good looks like” when it comes to fostering innovation, technology and performance at the global enterprise level.

A great read that will give you ideas about how to bring your own Procurement team to new heights.

Schneider Electric – Doing More, Better
by ProcureScape

No. 2 🥈

How to Build a Sourcing Strategy

Art of Procurement came out with a great primer article on strategic sourcing last month, covering topics like:

• What is a strategic sourcing strategy (hint: it’s routed in category management)

• Supplier segmentation strategies

• Sourcing strategies

• 5 steps to implement sourcing strategies in practice

• Common challenges to strategic sourcing strategies

This is a great resource if you’re just starting on your centralized procurement function journey.

How to Build A Strategic Sourcing Strategy
by Art of Procurement

No. 3 🥉

The Multiple Faces of Sustainable Sourcing

Sustainable procurement is a topic that can be quite nebulous to define... I’ve covered this before, trying to give you an “outside-in framework” you can use to define sustainable procurement objectives.

Outside the article above, this article is probably one of the better ones I’ve seen out there. It does a good job of highlighting the nuances and different dimensions at play in sustainable procurement.

This is helpful if you are trying to narrow in on what sustainable procurement means for your company (pro tip: each company needs its own definition/objectives IMO).

Sustainable Sourcing: Procurement’s Role For a Sustainable Future
by Jarrod McAdoo at Ivalua

No. 4 🏅

Decision Intelligence Applied to S&OP

As procurement professionals, we have business functions/processes “before” us (budgeting, sales & operations planning) and functions/processes “after” us (receiving, warehousing, production).

It’s always important to keep an ear to the ground regarding what is happening in these functions to understand how procurement needs to fit into the global picture.

One domain I’m personally reading up on is S&OP. A high performing S&OP process is a pre-requisite to a highly efficient direct procurement team. You can also start layering S&OP logic to your Maintenance, Repair and Operations (MRO) category as well.

In this article, Niels paints a picture of what good looks like in Integrated Business Planning (IBP).

Embracing Decision Intelligence to Enhance Integrated Business Planning
by Supply Chain Trend

No. 5 🎖

Where Are the Optimization Quick Wins?

Procurement processes are fairly similar across industries and regions… This means there’s a few well-known processes which are ripe for automation… The technology is there and the best practice processes are known.

It’s just a matter of execution.

In this recent article, Maya brings everything together on her Top 5 (supplier management, invoice approval, contract management, purchase requests and purchase orders) to give you the roadmap for automation of these 5 processes.

If you’re still doing these 5 manually in your business, it may be time to push the business case through!

Top 5 Procurement Processes Every Company Should Automate for Efficiency and Savings
by Maya Garcia-Hector at Focal Point

🌯 That’s a Wrap…

When you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help:

1. Pure Procurement Premium. Get access to Deep Dive guides and templates that help you get digital procurement right.

2. Work with me. I’ve been helping global procurement teams digitalize their processes and practices for 12+ years.

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Till next time,

— Joël Collin-Demers

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