Organisations are increasingly dependent on other organisations to fulfil their demands in terms of talent, technology, goods, and services. From raw material inputs for manufacturing and housekeeping staff, to automation technology for a distribution centre, organisations are highly reliant on the value that their suppliers and partners bring, and that value being coordinated logistically and optimised commercially.
The role of procurement in any organisation is to enable buying from these suppliers and partners. It’s an important role and given how much of the profit and loss is taken up by third-party spend, it’s even more important to get it right.
Over the years, the role of procurement has evolved as organisations realised the impact good procurement has on the ability to do business or provide services to the community. Procurement used to be the ‘Corporate Police’ — slowing things down, ensuring compliance, and obsessed with pricing. Accordingly, most of the focus and dedication of resources in procurement teams was directed towards transactional operations (e.g., purchasing, payments, supplier performance management) and executing sourcing activities. But that stance only works for organisations to a point, and it certainly isn’t a recipe for innovation and growth.
Next-generation procurement teams have a strong bias towards value delivery. There is a clear understanding of the organisation’s strategy and that is reflected in procurement’s strategic imperatives. Procurement operations are automated and optimised so that resources can be redeployed to delivering value, which is important to the organisation and its customers. Importantly, next-generation procurement teams are appropriately enabled with the right capability, process, governance, data, technology, and operating structures. Without these, the value of procurement is nowhere near as great as it could be.
The Infosys Portland Diamond Ring Framework for next-gen procurement holistically spans activities and enablers required to achieve best-in-class status.
Take the Portland Diamond Ring Maturity Assessment to get free insight into where your procurement team is getting it right and start a discussion on how to best prepare your procurement function for the future.
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