Michael Prest, in this morning’s Independent newspaper, gets quite excited about the rising profile of supply chain management and logistics. “The status of logistics has risen,” he writes. “The academic standing of the subject has grown commensurately.” It begs the question of whether those charged with logistics spend and SCM are equally optimistic.

Click to read more ...

Fresh from our first foray into the world of Tweetchat, the editorial team here at Procurement Leaders towers are feeling excited and, arguably, slightly bewildered by the social networking universe. #pldebate looked at one of our big issues de jour – talent. There were a lot of interesting ideas being put out in the internet ether, but one thing that came through was the need for procurement to achieve recognition, both internally and externally.

Click to read more ...

While much has been said of procurement being the opposite side of the same coin to sales, I wonder how much of that is true. How capable are we really of selling ourselves and of letting the ignorant know of the huge potential that procurement holds for both business improvement and career satisfaction? So, to align with the publication of our 25th issue in April, we thought it would be fun to set a challenge.

Click to read more ...

It's probably the single biggest issue facing procurement today: how to attract the best talent to the function so that procurement can cement its position at the top of the corporate hierarchy. Whether the subject comes up at a roundtable or while sharing a beer with a senior procurement executive, it's a topic that's always debated passionately.

Click to read more ...

Last week, Procurement Leaders was in Zurich to host a roundtable discussion on the issues our function faces in a post-recession world. The session, sponsored by BrainNet, covered lots of ground; from making the good work that procurement did during the recession stick when the good times return to managing risk and looking at the skill requirements of a modern procurement professional.

Click to read more ...

So far, the new decade has been a story of skills and talent. It seems that as companies the world over battened down the hatches to cope with the downturn, one of the first things to be sacrificed was their investment in people. Rightly or wrongly, a 'make do' attitude prevailed.

Click to read more ...

Talent. It’s cropped up plenty in recent weeks, in looking at marketing procurement and leadership, for example. It feeds into everything else and procurement managers are often expected to have plenty of tools in their belt. So where are these renaissance men and women supposed to come from?

Click to read more ...

Procurement Leaders' senior staff writer Steve Hall has just written an article on how procurement executives can best influence marketing folk. He spoke to the marketing director for Premier Foods in Ireland, Ciara Dilley, who talks about the difficulty in finding good-quality marketing procurement folk - a point which is backed up by RD Squared co-founder Rosie Doggett.

Click to read more ...

A recent roundtable event in London focused on the always-interesting challenge of cross-functional collaboration and how procurement can work closer with the rest of the business. It offered an excellent summary of the challenges and opportunities involved. One of the outcomes that stuck in my mind was a practice employed by construction company Tarmac to try and drive improvements in corporate-wide collaboration and performance. Adrian Cook, its executive director of procurement, was particularly enthused by a simple process.

Click to read more ...

Two recent conversations with chief procurement officers provided an interesting insight into the different ambitions held by sourcing professionals. The first was with the CPO of a consumer goods company who was facing a bit of a career crossroads. On the one hand, he could continue with the company he was currently working with but would have to move out of procurement into a more general business leadership role. The problem was he enjoyed procurement so much that he was considering leaving the company so he could remain within the profession.

Click to read more ...