What Level of Procurement Performance Are You At?
Last week, Pierre Mitchell of The Hackett Group asked you if you knew the difference between procurement value and procurement performance (part I and part II) over on Spend Matters and invited you to participate in a study that would help you identify where you were on your procurement journey by way of 18 value streams that range from "naive apprentice", where you're measuring performance at an elementary level, to "expert sorcerer", where you're extracting procurement value at a very advanced level. (Pierre also posted a link to a corresponding finance study that will help Hackett compile a full view on the problem, which Pierre has promised to provide free insights into on Spend Matters in the weeks to come.)
If you haven't taken the survey, as a serious supply management professional, I highly recommend that you do. I know that 30 to 45 minutes is a lot of time given how busy most of you are, but the 14 page survey is overflowing with more good information on what you might do to become "best in class" and much more informative than the last dozen tragic quadrants, graves, and research griefs that I've read from the "major" analyst firms. Organized around the 18 value streams that are designed to take a Procurement organization from "naive apprentice" to "strategic sourcerer", it forces you to think about the core issues and will help you understand where you are in your Procurement journey and just how far there is to go. This, in turn, will prepare you for the forthcoming posts where I give you the value streams and explain why they are important. These posts will then be followed by more posts from Pierre that will summarize the major results, on Spend Matters, and, at a later date, provide his views on the results and a few of the best practices that might help get you started on your journey, here on Sourcing Innovation.
(For those of you thinking you can skip the survey and wait, I have two things to tell you. First, Hackett, which is the premiere benchmarking and strategic advisory firm in the space, doesn't give away everything for free -- at the very least you have to complete the survey if you want deep insights. Second, if you don't take the survey and think about the questions with respect to the given alternatives, you're not likely to fully understand the value propositions Pierre and I will be giving you. Just like you have to prepare your body for a marathon, you have to prepare your mind for knowledge.)
Stay tuned! Much more to come in the weeks ahead.
Categories: Procurement Innovation,Best Practices
Tags: Procurement Performance
Michael,
Thanks for the post. But, 14 pages?! What font is your printer set on?
Pierre:
The Word Document you sent me with the complete survey was 15 pages -- 14 pages and a cover page. Depending on your reading speed, it will take you a good 30 to 45 minutes if you read every question and every possible answer.
As you pointed out, this is not necessary since (a) some of the questions are long only because detailed descriptions of each of the possible answers are provided, (b) some are drop downs with a number of disjoint choices (like industry), and some multi-part questions are answered simply with a 1-5 rating (which mean you don't have to review the rating scale for each part). As a result, some questions will be quick (15 - 30 seconds), but others, like the capabilities question (with 5 sub-points) or the question asking how the 18 procurement value contributions are recognized by Finance, could take a few minutes (3 in the first case, 9 in the second).
Even if we allow an average of a brief 2 minutes per question, that's 40 minutes. I know the survey is designed to be much, much, quicker than your normal multi-week process, but I think if people spend less than 30 - 45 minutes, they won't carefully consider the questions, and, more importantly, the possible answers -- which are jam packed with great suggestions that they can use to improve their measurements, capabilities, and processes.