The Situation

CPO concerned about the organisational challenge to focus staff on strategic, value adding procurement.

“Many companies are unaware of how their staff actually spend their time and the proportion of staff time spent on value adding activities. Senior managers are often unaware of how their actions generate non-value adding work.”

The Task

Understand how a statistically relevant global cross-section of Procurement Staff spend their time identifying opportunities to liberate time away from non-value adding activities.

[Why is this in quotes? Not sure it actually says what you want it to say]. “Insights into the non-value adding work being performed enables leaders to focus on how to release staff time, increase efficiencies, reduce costs and deliver additional value and $”

 

The Action / Approach

  • What did you do to help… Identify cost, quality and innovation improvements through development and delivery of an aligned sourcing strategy
  • What did you do to help… Enhance capabilities and capacity to meet business objectives
  • What did you do to help… Enhance reputation through increased relevance, alignment and impact with colleagues and suppliers
  • What did you do to help… Better outcomes from supplier negotiations

Investigated and selected tools and a methodology for conducting a global survey across all business [functions? operating unit?].

Led design workshop, staff engagement, communication strategy and roll-out of survey. [what was the design workshop like? A design workshop that…. the idea is to share your thinking and value, not just what you did]

Directed analysts to interpret results and deliver visualisation of Business Insights utilising Power BI. [And how did you do that? What principles did you employ?]

Engaged senior stakeholders on progress and reviewed results and interpretation ahead of senior leader and sponsor presentation [I would leave off reporting stuff. Of course, you did this].

One significant factor was ensuring an open, honest, transparent engagement with the participants on the reasons for the survey and the approach to ensure unbiased responses. This required significant engagement and testing ahead of the launch. [What did you do to drive engagement? How did you test?]

Driving completion of the survey required C-Level engagement and involvement.

The Result

Nothing quantitative….

  • Saved XXXXXX through alignment between business requirements and budget use
  • Improved project success rates and delivery times by 30%
  • Optimised procurement target operating model which resulted in RESULT

Value was delivered by;

  • Alignment between business requirements and budget use
  • Drive innovation for competitive advantage
  • Improved reputation, relationships, confidence and value delivered across the business
  • Optimised procurement target operating model
  • Improved project success rates and delivery times
  • Improved relationships with suppliers and partners
  • Delivering cost savings

Pains relieved included;

  • Poor reputation of procurement in the business
  • Poor or low reputation in the market
  • Unclear process and lack of governance
  • Lack of business clarity and priorities
  • Poor business alignment and engagement
  • Lack of clarity on ownership
  • Lack of available skills and experience
  • Lack of market / industry knowledge

The survey confirmed that at least 22% of time is spent on non-added value activities and 10% of staff time is spent in passive(no participation or value add for the participants) meetings

Key recommendations:

Focus on eliminating identified non-added value activities – process improvements or automate/digitalise
When unable to eliminate or automate/digitalise – transition activity to lower cost staff or consider outsourcing
Review meeting culture – empower staff to determine when to attend and when to leave

Focus In On: Responsible for Developing or Implementing a Sourcing Strategy

New Areas of Value:

Well aligned business requirements and budget use

Driving innovation for competitive advantage

Improved reputation, relationships, confidence and value delivered across the business

Optimised sourcing operating model

Improved project success rates and delivery times

Improved relationships with suppliers and partners

Delivering cost savings

Improvements around:

Poor reputation of sourcing in the business

Poor or low reputation in the market

Unclear process and lack of governance

Lack of business clarity & priorities

Poor business alignment & engagement

Lack of clarity on ownership

Lack of available skills & experience

Lack of market / industry knowledge