PROCUREMENT STRATEGY
expectations around service levels and performance ( timely ).”
Navigating today ’ s procurement challenges , driving transparency , visibility and intelligence When it comes to transparency , visibility , and intelligence , Walden comments that organisations often state that they want to be ‘ world-class ’, “ but they are not sure how to get there .”.
He adds : “ This is where a consultant can add value to an organisation , to identify strategic priorities and implement a roadmap to adopt best practices .”
When it comes to visibility , in particular , a common finding among procurement functions is poor data quality , especially in relation to understanding spend . “ There is still a lot of procurement activity that occurs outside of the function ,” says Derocher .
He adds : “ You have the marketing department or HR , for example buying their own goods and services so procurement doesn ’ t have direct visibility into the spend data of the entire organisation .”
But it doesn ’ t stop there . Derocher explains that “ this process is a continuum of collating data , turning that into good data that can then be analysed and provide meaningful insights that an organisation can take action on .”
Agreeing with Derocher , Dominy is seeing a rise in the use of procurement technologies : “ Spend analytics technology for sourcing and procurement is commonly incorporated into strategic procurement transformations for consultants to help drive visibility . The use of technology today has broadened into the entire source-topay ( S2P ) process , tackling areas where there are any kind of bottlenecks to streamline operations .” procurementmag . com 69