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Strategic Procurement

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Submitted By KABOLASHIJA
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S U P P LY M A N A G E m E N T

SPOTLIGHT on

Procurement’s Chance to Shine
Procurement professionals today have a huge opportunity to make a powerful impact on business performance.
By Marc Hochman and Robert Boll

Marc Hochman is a Vice President and Robert Boll is an Engagement Director at A.T. Kearney Procurement & Analytic Solutions. They can be reached at marc.hochman@ atkearney.com and robert.boll@ atkearney.com.

The business contribution expectations for procurement professionals are increasing; gone are the days of simply “I need a PO for this.” Successful transformation of the procurement organization hinges on enhancing its professionalism. The three key dimensions of the required transformation are: • Increasing responsibilities and higher value contributions. • Understanding and analyzing supply market dynamics. • Increasing support and alignment with business and functional strategies. Increasing responsibilities and higher value contributions. Customer demands on procurement and the supply chain overall are increasingly more diverse and complex. Procurement must be positioned to anticipate changes in business requirements, adapt to these changes, and accelerate change implementation to capture opportunities ahead of the competition. The capability to align customer segments with the right products/services and to develop adaptive supply chains are core elements of the value-added contributions that procurement is increasingly expected to deliver. A.T. Kearney’s recent Assessment of Excellence in Procurement (AEP) study determined that among the companies identified as leaders, 73 percent of their procurement activities were strategic in nature, the remainder tactical. In the “follower” organizations only 49 percent of their procurement activities were described as strategic.
March 2009

Today’s responsive procurement organizations must break the

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