Are Procurement and IT that different?
We sat down with Chris Sawchuk, co author of the recent Hackett Group report entitled “World-Class Procurement Spends 17 Percent Less; Are Well on Their Way to Becoming Client-Focused Service Providers” to discuss some of the points that the report raised. The question is how relevant could a consultancy that apparently works with large organisations have useful advise for smaller organisations or even departments outside procurement.
As the conversation progressed it was clear that Chris is the expert in procurement that his LinkedIn profile and speaking engagement history would suggest. It was interesting to note that what he was saying about Procurement could equally be relevant to any of the other departments that carry out the supporting activities within corporate including IT.
Much of the work done by the Hackett group is with larger multinational organisations but Sawchuk believes that lessons learnt in these companies can add value to smaller organisations as well. The report that can be downloaded though it was clear that this was only a portion of the full report and analysis that is available to the Hackett Group
Sawchuk was quick to point out that the information contained in the report is not based on a single snapshot survey but rather the culmination of more than a decade of collecting data points from customers through multiple surveys, meetings and the benchmark analysis that they carry out. The benchmarking alone has been carried out over 20 years and over 1000 organisations have participated at any one time. While it could be criticised for not being a true reflection of the current situation the picture it paints is one that evolves. In the same way the IT departments have not all fully embraced the cloud, neither have procurement teams fully adopted the latest thinking.
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