Purchasing Transformation

Today is the first day of the eWorld Purchasing & Supply, and one of the speakers at the event is Jenny Vårlid (she’s delivering a presentation on Managed Sourcing, describing how you can ensure savings from non-core categories) from IBX. When talking to her before she departed for London last night we got into the discussion of appropriate communication channels in change management projects.

Change management is a delicate subject and as we’ve discussed before, to succeed you can improve your chances by following a structured approach which includes both stakeholder analysis and the creation of a strong communications plan that includes message, concepts and choice of channels.

In recent projects that Jenny had been part of the choice of channels were not limited to classics such as newsletters, dedicated intranet sites and the use of existing inter-company magazines; the project management team had also set up a monitor displaying the project progression in the staff cafeteria.

As the organization had recently transformed using a centralized approach this meant that affected staff could check updated KPIs and purchasing statistics every time they grabbed a cup of coffee. It also meant that other functions got insight into the progression of the purchasing transformation. As the purchasing transformation program affects the entire organization, this approach has proved very successful.

When you’re setting up your change management program, make sure to spend some time looking into the communication plan; and if you don’t have the skill set required to make the necessary analysis on board get in touch with a communication expert. Most of the time, the resources are available in-house and if they’re not, don’t hesitate to look for an external partner. If you fail in the communication phase of your change management program, chances are that the entire program will falter and not yield the expected results.

Here at Purchasing Transformation, the so-called Web 2.0 technologies are something we care a lot about. We wouldn’t be doing this blog if we didn’t believe that the content we create was not syndicated into someone’s RSS-feed and re-published somewhere else.

Blogs, Wiki’s and forums are highlighted in a recent issue of A.T. Kearneys “Excecutive Agenda” as the technologies that support company growth through increased employee co-operation and improved communication. By using these tools; “the invitation to engage in transformation is thrown open to the whole organization”.

To connect to one of my older posts on the subject of communication in a change (or transformation) process, don’t just look at these tools as just being technologies; see them as communication channels, and as such they must be understood in order to be effective. It’s not the technology in itself that will make the difference, it’s the understanding of the channels and how the audience use it that will prove vital.