On numerous occasions the Blog has highlighted the debate around improving the strategic positioning of the procurement function within businesses.
This has been at the lighter end of the scale with Proxima’s bid to detoxify the procurement brand through to looking at the implications for the disconnect between commissioning/procurement and other board level business decisions.
Against that background this piece from the Harvard Business review makes sobering reading.
Just read the first paragraph:
“Back in 1983, in a Harvard Business Review article, Peter Kralijc called for the procurement function to take on a larger and more strategic role in managing the supply chain. Thirty years on, sales people in most large companies are still being trained in ways to actually bypass procurement folks in their customer companies. This is not evidence of people taking the function seriously. What went wrong?”
The article reviews the results of a survey which gives some valuable insight into the routes of these problems. And, believe us, it isn’t ALL to do with how the business treats its procurement people….
