Category: Professional Development

Professional Development

Should I Get Certified?

Planning to take the CPPB or CPPO exams this fall? Wonder if the time and effort are worth it? NASPO is here to help!
If you are preparing to take the CPPB or CPPO exams check out the online prep courses available through NASPO. These courses are designed as a facilitated review of the UPPCC Body of Knowledge and can be accessed through the Procurement U Learning Management System (LMS).

The registration deadline for the fall courses is July 23.

Most professionals regularly ask themselves questions like, “How do I grow in my career?” or “How do I increase my credibility?” One of the most effective paths to achieving these goals is to obtain certification in your field. This is certainly the case in public procurement, where for decades certification has yielded benefits to the employee, their organization, and the profession as a whole.
For the employee achieving certification, benefits can include:

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Professional Development

Continuous Improvement Webinar – Find the Gap!

Recently, on a NASPO webinar aimed at helping state procurement officials determine what continuous improvement tools and methods might be able to do for them, presenters Jason Soza (CPO, Alaska) and Richard Pennington (NASPO Life Members and NASPO ValuePoint General Counsel) tried to solve a huge problem; the chickens keep getting run over by cars because they’re trying to cross the road…
Jason: “Why did the chicken cross the road?”
Richard: “To get to the other side.”
Jason: “Why did the chicken need to get to the other side?”
Richard: “To stretch its legs.”

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Professional Development

A Skillset for the Future

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.
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