Profit from Procurement

13ROADMAP: Making a Concrete and Realistic Plan

This chapter assumes that you are a CPO, CFO, or CEO; that you're looking to make a major profit impact through Procurement; that Procurement is currently not optimized; and that a program of change will be required to make improvements to the function and to generate the savings. You're looking to maximize Procurement's impact—so where do you start? How do you get from today to a place where Procurement has been optimized and is delivering significant benefits to the business year-on-year?

Well, as with everything worth having, there's a journey involved. A gradual transformation. Ideally, in fact, an 18-month (or thereabouts) Procurement Transformation Program. Without such a program, you just won't receive the same level of attention, focus, and resource.

It's difficult to make a splash by just carrying on—particularly if there's a history of Procurement not having the right remit towards the business. Yes, the authors of this book are consultants, who are naturally biased towards a “program.” But over the last 25 years, we've learned that there is a very strong correlation between success and the degree to which there is a formal, high visibility program of work.

This program needs to make a splash, so it needs to be high impact, high visibility, cross-functional, and fully resourced, so that it delivers significant savings for the business: An 18-month program, by the end of which you will have built an excellent Procurement ...