Customer-centric procurement

How would your internal customers rate their experience with procurement? If yours is like most, it’s not even a three-star rating. Procurement is blamed for having outdated non-integrated technology, hard to understand policies and procedures, limited insights on purchases being made, and overall contributing to frustration rather than alleviating it. Customer expectations have fundamentally changed in recent years, and this is now making its way from the home into the business world.

In the procurement function of the future, customer centricity will likely be a focus in all aspects of procurement including systems, processes, and people. Procurement can be a true business partner, not a spend gatekeeper, and business partners can recognise the value add from procurement and want to work with them.

In order to deliver this, procurement may:

• provide a seamless user-friendly experience that is relevant to the complexity of the work
• fill a relationship broker role, requiring a high degree of emotional intelligence and empathy both on the customer and supplier side
• be a key contributor in the business planning process
• act as a broker to products, skills, and sources of innovation to help solve the business’s problems.

It’s no longer business as usual for procurement. The scale and speed of transformation required to address the mix of disruptors impacting procurement is unprecedented. The key to success is to proactively develop a blueprint for how your procurement organisation can turn these disruptors into opportunity for competitive advantage and growth. Learn more about the future of procurement.