You Are Here, You Thought You Were Here, and You are Actually Here!

How easy is your Procurement or Supply Chain organization to understand?

Too often an organizational structure is created based on what seems to be most effective for itself, but not necessarily for the internal clients that it is meant to serve.

So great! -- you are effective and efficient and are poised to do great things for the corporation but so what if no one knows how to get to you or based on the complexity of the organizational model, is frustrated before you even start to work with them.



Have you ever gone into a new mall to shop, tried to find a specific store, and then left in frustration because no matter which twist and turn you took it always seemed that this particular store was still on the other side of the mall?

Well just think of your group as that store -- you have great "stuff" -- you can get better quality, at a lesser price, in half the time of anyone else. But if it's not easy to get to you, or understand how it would be to work with you, you'll constantly just be dealing with those who just happen, by chance or necessity, to "buy" from your shop.

When considering how to organize your team to best serve your stakeholders (internal and external), why not ask them? What aren't they using the services you provide? What would a successful engagement with a procurement team be as far as they are concerned? What do they think you do?

As in an earlier entry to this blog....Build it and They will come... is a pipe dream. You need to, just like any company selling a product or service, make it easy to come to you, understand you, and you need to make the engagement process a great experience.

This doesn't mean doing everything your client wants you to -- because often they are misguided in their beliefs. But it does mean explaining all the way through why this would work best for them, why its important -- and make sure you let their opinion matter throughout. You want them to have an amazing experience and have them tell others about it.

One of the best ways of making it easier for the stakeholders to "shop" from your store is by creating roles that are business development type roles -- these individuals should know procurement but do not actually perform any of the functions. Their role is strictly in relationship management and they become the single point of contact and entry for you internal clients into your organization. Furthermore, these individuals are constantly with their client group, can monitor satisfaction with performance and deal with issues (the molehills) before they become mountains.

You can link to an article where I deal with this at http://www.sdcexec.com/online/article.jsp?id=5552

Remember simpler is better -- for both you and your stakeholders