Procurement as a profession is evolving at a pace that is increasingly in step with technology. While procurement was once seen as a transactional, process-driven function, technology is freeing us up to play a much more strategic part in driving organizational efficiencies and savings. Gone are the days of hanging out in the basement, pushing through stacks of purchase orders, and making purchasing decisions based on hunches. We are now being brought to the forefront, breaking out of silos and using data to make smarter decisions that drive savings for the enterprise.
As this transformation occurs, procurement leaders need to recognize the shift in skills that is needed for their office to stay in front of the wave. Much of what we looked for in a procurement officer in the past came down to several soft skills, which still form the foundation of what we look for today: Are you a good problem solver? Can you work with a variety of personalities? How do you handle stress? With these soft skills in place, a resourceful and hard-working new hire could hit the ground running and learn the technical aspects of a procurement job on the fly.
All of this is changing and changing fast. Procurement offices that once flew under the radar now must be the radar and proactively look for opportunities to add value to our organization, not wait for others to come to us with ideas. The old adage “innovate or die” fits well here – if our only goal in life is to check boxes and resist change, guess what? Machines can check boxes faster, cheaper, and more accurately. (In fact, artificial intelligence has already been developed that can read and accurately grade elementary school papers. Bids and proposals aren’t too far from that!) Instead of fighting the change, we need to embrace it and the opportunities that it creates.
To that end, there are a handful of hard skills that we can now begin to grow in our existing staff and look for in new hires to help our offices continue to add value. Each has at least a few – and sometimes many – related training and certification program that can be easily found online with a quick search. I see these skills as becoming increasingly necessary to tackle the procurement work of the future and may not be easily or quickly acquired on the job. It’s important to keep in mind that even when you come across a person that has a knack for one of these skills, helping them to build on it through formal training and certification will give them a framework to take that “knack” to the next level!
With that, here’s what I see as the procurement hard skillset of the (near) future
1. Project Management: Most procurement officers already possess some level of project management skills. The nature of procurement requires team building, organizational, and leadership skills, which form the basis of project management. However, as procurements become more complex and as new methodologies are developed, more formal project management training will become necessary to maintain a structured, standard approach, allowing us to deliver a consistent process to our stakeholders.
2. Data Analytics: Hooray! We’ve got a new e-procurement system and loads of data coming in! Now what!? In order to make sense of all the information coming at us, we need to be skilled in how to break it down, what to look for, and how to interpret it. As more and more processes are automated, our ability to collect data will continue to grow and with it, the sheer mass of data is only going to grow as well. Having someone trained in the techniques of data analytics will be imperative if we are to use this data to our advantage.
3. Process Improvement: Procurement processes are magnets for reactive “band-aids” – we all have experience with outdated policies that cause more work, add no value, and were put in place because something went wrong 20 years ago. Instead of just continuing to follow those policies, we need to get in the habit of asking why they exist in the first place and that’s where process improvement methodologies like Lean and Six Sigma come in. These methodologies provide staff with toolkits and the discipline to ensure that improvements are made in a measured, controlled way, and that a culture of continuous improvement is fostered.
Jason Soza is the Chief Procurement Officer for the State of Alaska, overseeing and managing nearly $2 billion in spend by state agencies and political subdivisions over a geographic area as wide as the 48 contiguous US. He serves on both the NASPO Board of Directors and the NASPO ValuePoint Management Board, helping to produce work that helps advance his state, other jurisdictions, and the procurement profession as a whole. In his spare time, Jason is a hockey goaltender and has learned that this position in sports and his job in procurement have a lot in common – people are always trying to sneak something by you!
Bravo, Jason, on the insight here. On the project management front, procurement professionals not only manage their own. They also are encountering project delivery methods like Agile that challenge their practice of procurement. In a world of exploding data, understanding how to select what is important and identify useful patterns and trends is critical. And with respect to continuous improvement, procurement professionals can’t see them as just the next “shiny things.” A culture of continuous improvement like Kaizen from Japanese manufacturing) needs to be melted into to organizations.
And KUDOs to leading with the importance of teams. Teams are the lifeblood of organizations. Procurement teams are part of their circulatory system. — Richard Pennington
Thanks Richard! Yes, the kaizen mentality is necessary for really any of this to work. I mean, why go seek a data analytics certification if we’ve never needed one before? Continuous improvement, that’s why! Thanks for bringing that up. Fostering the change in culture needed to get to a place where the team is always looking for a better way to do things makes a world of difference.
I enjoyed your post. I would also suggest the we include security in your list and how to embed it in our thinking and processes. As you know, this area is at the top of the list for the NACIO annual survey each year and critical procurement technology and infrastructure needs to be protected. – Don Lovett
Jason great observations and nicely articulated. Project management, data analysis and process improvement are core essential skills. I like your suggestion of formally training staff with a “knack”. Having a formal structure to integrate with innate skill certainly strengthens our teams. Thank you for your leadership!
Spot on, Jason. Procurement today and for the future is all about how people will be able to adapt to, optimize, and leverage the emerging technologies that will drive value for their organizations. Technology should be an enablement tool, but despite would some will tell you, there will still be a need for skilled people who have emotional intelligence and can interpret the nuances of what the data means for their business. Find the best tools to give you visibility into your data and make better decisions and process improvements, and build a team of savvy professionals.
Thanks! You are absolutely right – data tells a story, but not the whole story. We need professionals who can tease out the unknown and add insight if we truly want to leverage that information.
Great post Jason. As we talk to current staff, interns, and the future generation of (hopefully “intentional”) procurement professionals, they will be asking how they can get ahead, be productive and contribute. Providing insight, perspective and guidance (as you and the others have done here) helps advance the procurement profession. Lifelong learning is important for professionals of all ages. Thanks for your posts.
Great blog Jason! Procurement needs to move away from transactional based work into strategic and value added initiatives. Instead of waiting for our customers to come to us with their needs, its so much better to be educating ourselves on initiatives and smart pilot projects for other municipalities to bring into our own workforce. And love your note about the soft skills – dealing with stress, being flexible, knowing how to deal with multiple personalities…spot on! And learning to be better at presenting our point of view, and becoming champions of change…that’s what makes procurement become an integral part of any organization. Great post!
Some great comments , I would add we also need people who can take a position of business leadership to drive transformation in a collaborative way , by the way we need to move at pace as other historically traditional support functions HR and finance are also looking to re-position themselves as well
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Bravo, Jason, on the insight here. On the project management front, procurement professionals not only manage their own. They also are encountering project delivery methods like Agile that challenge their practice of procurement. In a world of exploding data, understanding how to select what is important and identify useful patterns and trends is critical. And with respect to continuous improvement, procurement professionals can’t see them as just the next “shiny things.” A culture of continuous improvement like Kaizen from Japanese manufacturing) needs to be melted into to organizations.
And KUDOs to leading with the importance of teams. Teams are the lifeblood of organizations. Procurement teams are part of their circulatory system. — Richard Pennington
Thanks Richard! Yes, the kaizen mentality is necessary for really any of this to work. I mean, why go seek a data analytics certification if we’ve never needed one before? Continuous improvement, that’s why! Thanks for bringing that up. Fostering the change in culture needed to get to a place where the team is always looking for a better way to do things makes a world of difference.
I enjoyed your post. I would also suggest the we include security in your list and how to embed it in our thinking and processes. As you know, this area is at the top of the list for the NACIO annual survey each year and critical procurement technology and infrastructure needs to be protected. – Don Lovett
Jason great observations and nicely articulated. Project management, data analysis and process improvement are core essential skills. I like your suggestion of formally training staff with a “knack”. Having a formal structure to integrate with innate skill certainly strengthens our teams. Thank you for your leadership!
Spot on, Jason. Procurement today and for the future is all about how people will be able to adapt to, optimize, and leverage the emerging technologies that will drive value for their organizations. Technology should be an enablement tool, but despite would some will tell you, there will still be a need for skilled people who have emotional intelligence and can interpret the nuances of what the data means for their business. Find the best tools to give you visibility into your data and make better decisions and process improvements, and build a team of savvy professionals.
Thanks! You are absolutely right – data tells a story, but not the whole story. We need professionals who can tease out the unknown and add insight if we truly want to leverage that information.
Great post Jason. As we talk to current staff, interns, and the future generation of (hopefully “intentional”) procurement professionals, they will be asking how they can get ahead, be productive and contribute. Providing insight, perspective and guidance (as you and the others have done here) helps advance the procurement profession. Lifelong learning is important for professionals of all ages. Thanks for your posts.
Great blog Jason! Procurement needs to move away from transactional based work into strategic and value added initiatives. Instead of waiting for our customers to come to us with their needs, its so much better to be educating ourselves on initiatives and smart pilot projects for other municipalities to bring into our own workforce. And love your note about the soft skills – dealing with stress, being flexible, knowing how to deal with multiple personalities…spot on! And learning to be better at presenting our point of view, and becoming champions of change…that’s what makes procurement become an integral part of any organization. Great post!
Some great comments , I would add we also need people who can take a position of business leadership to drive transformation in a collaborative way , by the way we need to move at pace as other historically traditional support functions HR and finance are also looking to re-position themselves as well