Congratulations, Procurement professionals…
Procurement salaries on the rise - 7% increase in 2008 vs. 2007. I very much expected this and I am sure the percentage will go up in 2009 as well. Reason, I attribute to, is the “R” factor - Recession. Cutting cost and improving on savings target are on the high focus and is uniform across industries, enterprise size and global regions. Though procurement department is not solely responsible to achieve these targets in the rough time (all the departments in the organization are involved), but these professionals drive this cause across the organization.
For Nokia, this recession has given a positive outlook to their sourcing team. For this fiscal, Nokia doubled its savings target with fewer staff – it reduced its sourcing staff by 10%. In the process, the company has also moved away from traditional category focus to knowledge focus. I am sure enhancing the skills of these sourcing professionals is also an added priority to the procurement office.
Siemens looks at procurement to improve its fortunes. Siemens continues to focus on procurement to improve its competitiveness and their purchasing managers will be measured against savings targets.
For CPO and the sourcing and procurement team, over and above the targets, there are tough objectives to be met out there - increasing the amount of spend under management; improved operating efficiency within; enhancing the skills of the sourcing professionals; suppliers cannot be hammered too much; keep the internal stakeholder satisfaction and external supplier long term relationship running and evolving – definitely calls for a premium.
