I have just read an article that summarised the findings from interviewing 250 procurement people from around the world. The interesting statistics that stood out to me are that they on average spend 25% of their working day in collating data on the marketplace and suppliers. Then 92% of the respondents rely on getting this data from their suppliers. With 60% replying on ‘costly management consultancies’ for this same data.

For me this is quite staggering. Of course you get the most reliable spend data on your organisation from your supplier as it will always be better than your Accounts Payable system. But knowing your market and the category of spend that you are responsible for is a key part of any procurement person’s role – can you trust suppliers to be open and honest, or will they want to play a game in controlling the data that they will provide you. What happened to Mintel reports; Keynotes; attending industry conferences; reading relevant market publications (such as Media Week); using Google to search for this information and of course talking to peers and suppliers is part of the data gathering process. When I talk to Procurement people about the basics e.g. industry magazine subscriptions, they say that they cannot afford it. One of my clients last year was a High Street retailer and I was passing them my old back copies of my magazines. Read more »