The past few weeks I’ve been going through the ever-growing pile of reports that amass on my digital desktop and one thing that strikes me when comparing different best practices is that one re-occurring theme is focus; be it for supplier base consolidation or central co-ordination.
As an avid runner and cyclist I’m rather surprised that this still seems to be an issue for many companies. To succeed one has to specialize – your either a sprinter or a long distance runner. It’s quite simple and universal actually, yet when it comes to IM&S procurement many companies are still viewing their task as a pure support function that needs to be able to deal with any and all issues that may arise. To put things bluntly:
How many category managers for office supplies do we really need?
I doubt that they are viewed as strategically important in any industry sector. In a sense I can feel that any IM&S category that can easily be placed into a category tree should be viewed as un-strategic. In our era of focus, as such they should be viewed as a candidate for outsourcing so I believe it’s prime time to do some make/buy homework.
As companies downsize their supplier base – focusing on closer relationships with strategic suppliers (as leaders do for instance according to this Roland Berger report) – it’s due time that purchasing functions take a good look at IM&S outsourcing possibilities; go deep my friends and let others do the more un-strategic work.
