For a long time the availability of talent has been a limiting factor for achieving purchasing excellence in many companies. Now, in the downturn, the availability of skilled staff is obviously higher in basically all professions. But there are reasons to believe that the current availability of top talent purchasing professionals is greater than for other professions.
Why? The reason is simple. The best purchasers have always been found in industries that A) has a high purchasing spend as a share of their turnover and B) are highly competitive. For example, the automotive industry has a purchasing share of some 80% and is extremely competitive. They have always been the forerunners in developing purchasing excellence. On the other extreme we have utilities: Low purchasing spend and low competition ( the latter mainly due to state regulations or even monopolies). And it is clear that the companies in the thoughest markets are hit the hardest by the downturn. No wonder that GM and Saab (both great companies in purchasing) are about to go bust while the Swedish state monopoly Vattenfall slashes out some 8 Bn Euros (!) when buying a Dutch utility.
So if you are the CPO in a company that is still standing up: this is your chance to drastically improve your organisations performance.
