Having just listened to an excellent presentation by Christopher Stockwell, vice president of procurement at Heinz, it's clear how far this function has advanced over the past few years. 

As the title suggests, Stockwell was speaking at the Emptoris Empower event 2009 in Boston and delivered a frank and honest assessment of Heinz's transformation - the challenges he faced, the achievements made and the mistakes too. 

The journey has seen Heinz improve from a bottom quartile purchasing function in 2004 to a second quartile function today. And Stockwell will not rest until Heinz are sitting on top of the perch. 

It hasn't been easy, however. It involves procurement adopting the language of the business and not the language of procurement, rigorous benchmarking and change management processes, a real focus on people and training (Heinz has a shared investment in training with its people, with CPM-level qualification almost a prerequisite for advancement), and much, much more. 

But the net effect has been a continuous improvement programme which has delivered. Top of Stockwell's list of priorities? A focus on innovation and how procurement can deliver top-line growth to the business - something which brings both value to the company and respect to the procurement function.

"It's the most important thing we do day in day out in procurement," he said. "We love to manage cost, but if we grow top line we bring so much more. For us, it's a really important part of what we do."

And that really is the language of business.