Читать книгу Profit from Procurement - Jose Oliveira Valentede - Страница 21

There is one company I've had the pleasure of working with that has created a well-oiled Strategic Sourcing engine at the core of its function that has been the guardian of cost competitiveness for the organization for almost a decade. If you speak to the CPO, there is more to be done, but he knows how the Procurement function is perceived—a competent, if occasionally over-zealous function that has contributed significant and unprecedented commercial firepower to the organization.

The CPO is an influencer at board level and has the ear of the CFO. So, what now for this Procurement function?

It goes without saying that keeping on top of cost is a key priority, but arguably they are much further on than the Fintech company in the previous example. That means that the machine can run itself with just a little fine-tuning here and there. People in the wider organization are looking to and indeed expecting Procurement to raise its game yet again, such is the success of the function so far.

So, what is the ambition of this function? Well, they are numerous, but they definitely include maintaining cost competitiveness. The second is refining their demand forecasting tool to further reduce maintenance costs across the business and even start to generate revenue.

By analyzing and modeling data as to where failures are likely to occur, the Procurement function has worked closely with the supply chain and the maintenance function to make it many times more efficient. This is a sophisticated tool and methodology the CPO has the ambition to sell to other companies in the industry and generate revenue.

The company, being publicly regulated, is also under pressure to demonstrate its credentials in sustainability. Again, Procurement has ambitions and permission to take the lead here and has begun to weave sustainability requirements into the sourcing and supplier performance management processes which it then reports on. This in turn strengthens the hand of the company in its periodic negotiations with the regulator.

These sorts of value contributions from Procurement are hugely significant, and it's because of the trust and credibility Procurement has built up over many years that it has had the ability to have this type of ambition and deliver these results.