One thing that seems to be lacking across the Procurement industry is consistency

I have worked as a Procurement consultant since the late 1900’s and I have had the pleasure of working for over thirty different companies in nearly all sectors. I have worked as a category manager for just about every category you can think of and some that you probably cannot; I have been head of Procurement a few times and I have also transformed or set up many Procurement functions. I have worked for large organisations and I have worked for small organisations. The thing I find most sticking about each company is the differences between their Procurement functions and the fact that their processes are different. It’s hard to think of any elements being the same in any of the companies. 

There seems to be a push from the UK government to be more ‘Global’ in its Procurement outlook since the break from the European Union and the OJEU processes. There is currently a Green Paper on the subject of what the Procurement process, specifically the Supplier Selection process, should be within the public sector. The current thoughts are that the processes should be simplified and we should just have the one process as apposed to the many processes with the overall OJEU process. While I very much welcome this approach by Boris, I do think that there needs to be consistency within companies around the steps taken by the business and Procurement when it comes to managing a Procurement Project. I currently do not see this consistency across companies and organisations.

I think a starting point for the UK’s Procurement functions would be to have some headlines of activities as outlined below:

• Procurement need to engage with the business.

This is an obvious step, but you will be surprised how many companies don’t do this on a regular basis. There are a few steps within this heading that should be thought about at this stage too, does the budget and cost code exist for this project? Who is the project manager on the business side and who is responsible for the spec and implementation?

• Supplier Engagement

This is obviously where the tender of RfP happens.

• Legal and Commercial

Here we should expect to see how the contract will operate, what the obligations on both sides and obtain approval / signature

• Internal Reviews

There clearly needs to be some sort of communications with other internal company departments. Most services now have an IT element to them so are IT happy with the chosen solution and will it be allowed on their network; do facilities need to know about this and do we need to consider other internal departments?

• Procurement Admin

Is this contract in the contract database? Have Procurement set up supplier management meetings? And how is the performance of the supplier going to be measured against the contract that everyone has signed?

By capturing these 5 steps within Procurement departments will start to bring consistency to the industry. Then, anyone like me who has the privilege of working for many different organisations, will recognise the Procurement department and hit the ground running