Supply Excellence — Knowledge is Power in Change-Resistant Culture

Knowledge is Power in Change-Resistant Culture

May 24th, 2007 · by Tim Minahan · No Comments · Supply Management 2.0 Forum, best practices, supply management

Driving change is hard. Driving change in a highly decentralized business environment without a clear mandate can be downright overwhelming. That was the challenged faced by one of the world’s largest and most innovative technology companies.
“For a company that prides itself on innovation, driving standard procurement processes and procedures is almost counter to the business culture,” the Senior Program Management for the technology giant’s Global Procurement Group told the audience of supply management executives attending the Supply Management 2.0 Forum in Chicago last week. “We needed to prove the value of procurement and to arm our team and stakeholders with the information and tools to improve [procurement performance].”
The Global Procurement Group set out to prove its salt by adopting a common e-sourcing platform globally, enabling it to establish and reinforce standard sourcing practices, monitor spend and sourcing results, and return some quick and measurable supply savings and performance results to the businesses.
Another cornerstone of the technology firm’s transformation plan was to establish a central, online knowledge center for all sourcing and category management policies, templates, and best practices. Accessible to the company’s 250 global procurement team members through a common Web browser, this Procurement Center of Excellence (CoE) provides content and tools in four key areas:

Category management – includes how-to-guides and templates for category planning, including opportunity assessments, spend analysis, supply market assessments, and demand management approaches. Additional content and tools support standards for category goal setting, compliance, and category profiles and business reviews.
Strategic sourcing – offers best practices and templates for RFx, negotiations, and strategic sourcing processes. Also includes step-by-step guides for sourcing project management and validation, e-sourcing user guides and training materials, contract lifecycle management, and savings implementation planning.
Vendor management – provides vendor performance management tools, including standard scorecard questionnaires and templates, and strategic business reviews, as well as templates for issue resolution and vendor innovation tracking. Also includes protocol for vendor relationship management and risk management.
Professional development – offers a well-defined map for career advancement, including calendars of training, certifications, and recommended reading as well as a current listing of open procurement positions. Also provides access to third-party research, benchmarking, and professional organizations.

The Web-based CoE, which was developed and is maintained by the company’s own procurement team, also includes a listing of category subject matter experts (SMEs) and an open discussion board for questions on supply management or category approaches. To foster CoE adoption, the procurement team continually tracks usage and issues weekly targeted “One-Minute Update” e-mails on new content, templates, or policies. The technology giant also encourages cross-region and –divisional collaboration and the use of standard best practices by SMEs available across the businesses and by requiring peer review of every category and sourcing plan.
The approach has been well received, according to the company’s Senior Program Director. Traffic to the CoE continues to trend up. And the procurement team is seeing results in the form of improved use of standard methods and reporting as well as better acceptance of procurement across the organization.

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