Procurement Professional is the official publication of CIPS Australasia

#95 - How to be professional in procurement ...

19 Nov 2009

An article in UK newspaper The Times  http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article6860903.ece
asks the question recently, “what is the point of HR departments?” Quite, you might concur?

But there is a lesson here for Procurement too. And IT, Marketing, Legal, Property and any other ‘service’ professions within large organisations.
The point of this article is ‘how hard can it be, dealing with people?’

Many think the same about procurement. Buying stuff. How hard can it be, shopping? I mean I do it every day, the occasional haggle and a bit of chasing perhaps – can’t be difficult, surely? 

And that’s the argument for professionalism. Not to make things obscure. To professionalise them. The key question is though, what does professionalism truly mean? There are many definitions. Almost every dictionary has a different slant on the definition. This is a CIPS slide defining professionalism – of course the whole point of the Institute is to effectively promote professionalism:

 

The Buyer’s favourite definition of professionalism is the second line – minimising mistakes. Forgive the inference, but hiring an ‘old pro’ gets the job done right and for the least total cost in the end. Professionals deploy the corporate memory of the profession. Everything that the profession has leant over the years encapsulated into accepted standards and the best practice for the given situation [see also blog #7], guided by the right process.

We all make mistakes, we are all human, but professionals make less mistakes. Moreover, they don’t fall for the obvious mistakes, they will relate theory to practice, apply standards & ethics and deliver a least total-cost outcome for the beneficiaries (unlike HR of course). And that way we demonstrate that professional procurement is not just ‘shopping’ and not everyone can do it. Because it is complex and difficult to get a good outcome, because so many stakeholders want so many different outcomes from their buying  – not just delivery, not just a good price. But less risk, better quality, lower total costs and so on. In fact there’s a CIPS slide on that too.....

 

The Buyer – posted 19 November 2009

The views of THE BUYER are personal and are not necessarily those of Procurement Professional magazine, BTTB Marketing nor CIPS.