Procurement Best Practices

Over the years I’ve had some great ideas. I’ve had some pretty dumb ideas too. I’ve followed through on some – both the good ones and the dumb ones but most, I have to admit, have been left as just ideas. But it still gives me great satisfaction when I get to see one of my great ideas executed perfection – by someone else. A number of years ago, I had the great idea that smart phones could be used as purchase to pay tools. I wrote about it here. The problem of process compliance in some situations like construction sites it that it has, historically at least, been difficult to put IT solutions in place. Purchasing Cards have been tried but rather than helping to support a robust purchase to pay process they tend to remove the process entirely – the “Nuke” option. But now, everyone carries a smart phone and it’s perfectly feasible to put purchasing software in the hands of everyone, regardless of their working environment. It’s not just possible – it’s delivered, and a few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure to speak to Patrick Hopkins, CPO at Coca Cola Bottling Company to understand how they’ve implemented a Coupa solution to do just that.

News of the legal tiff between Somerset County Council and the IBM led Southwest One Consortium set me wondering once again about the outsourcing of Procurement. Specifically, why would you want to do it? Outsourcing of procurement in one form or another is not new. Strategic IT partnerships between pubic bodies and ICT providers, for example, have a history that is decidedly mixed, although the difficulties tend not to be made public by either “partner”. At least one such partnership was to my knowledge originally promoted in part as a nifty wheeze to get round those pesky public procurement rules and another seemed to me on at least one occasion to sail very close to the wind indeed in terms of propriety and legality of decision making.

Many will know of, if not know personally, Charles Dominick of Next Level Purchasing fame. The Procurement Game Plan is a new book that Charles has co-written together with Soheila Lunney and he kindly sent me a copy this week to review. Now I can count on the fingers of both ears the number of times I've reviewed a book on procurement so I was delighted to delve into it and see what I could come out with.

Some great things have come out of Australia but leaving Rolf Harris and Skippy aside, passion for procurement doesn’t seem to be one of them. Why is it that Aussies don't get as passionate as the poms about procurement? Well I'm not sure that the Europeans do get quite as passionate as Claudine Swiatek believes in her captivating article in her blog The Young Sourcerer about passion. But her point is well made that it's a shame that procurement isn't as well respected in some quarters as it should be.

It's been a difficult couple of weeks to RIM. The service disruption in parts of Europe then more recently in the US couldn't have come at a worse time. With revenues down 10% and profits more than halved,  (according to The Economist) it's a brave IT buyer that backs the Blackberry. The Blackberry is losing ground for all kinds of reasons. Some blame the odd governance structure of Research in Motion with joint chairmen also acting as joint CEO and the growing competition from the iPhone and Android smart phones is having a significant impact. But RIM's difficulties are just a single example of how the rapidly moving market for consumer IT is making the job of managing IT policy and IT sourcing more complex.