Procurement is no longer a fixed, transactional role in the confines of strategy. In the midst of changing markets, technology and supply chain complexities, your procurement team needs ongoing procurement training. They need to add value, to increase competitiveness. They need to adapt to their growing environment, to the new technologies, processes and risks that procurement faces. This article examines how procurement training, when done consistently, relates directly to growth and resiliency within the company.
Staying Ahead with Industry Trends
One thing about procurement? It is like a spinning wheel. Ever evolving. Evergreen. So if you want to continue operating in the most effective way possible, you just have to continue educating your organisation’s procurement teams. You don’t want them left behind on industry trends! This education — and well, training — will give them all the knowledge on new technologies and best practices. Good news for you! There are so many new advancements that are making procurement more efficient like artificial intelligence (AI), data analytics and automation.
- AI and Data Analytics: One of the things you absolutely must do is teach your procurement teams how to use AI and data analytics so that they make informed decisions — using data of course, and improve how they foresee demand, how they manage what they spend and how they select suppliers.
- Automation: Automation saves time by liberating teams from laborious manual work, giving them the opportunity to focus on more strategic work.
Understanding the most up-to-date trends helps procurement professionals optimise practices, improve sourcing strategies and increase overall supply chain resiliency contributing to an overall successful business in the long run.
Enhancing Strategic Decision-Making Skills
The modern-day procurement is a strategic department and decision-making is at the heart of it. Better trained, they offer better decision-making capabilities with the help of continuous training in analytical skills to make strategic informed choices.
- Knowing Market Dynamics: Training will equip the procurement team with information about market trends. They will come to know the market conditions such as price fluctuations, global trade policies, instability in the supply chain, etc.
- Best Suppliers to Choose: They will learn how to determine the suppliers based on their level of skills such as reliability, cost, condition, etc in line with the vision of an organisation.
- Allocating Budgets: Your procurement team will get the skills they need to reduce costs, and they will do this without reducing quality.
You see that? With professional development through ongoing training that doesn’t stop, you’ll sharpen the skills of your procurement professionals.
Mitigating Risks and Ensuring Compliance
Minimise risk. Source responsibly. What does this do? Make your organisation super successful in procurement! What, then, do you need? Regular training, of course. Your organisation’s procurement team will follow laws of compliance and be well prepared for any risks that may present themselves.
- Legal Standards: Regulations keep on changing. So procurement professionals have to go through training on a regular basis so that they do not breach any compliance regulations that lead to legal disputes and fines — no one wants that.
- Risk Reduction: Regular learning enables procurement teams to identify potential challenges in their supply chains — from supplier performance to political risk and market rate changes — and manage those risks before they damage the company.
- Sustainable and Ethical Practices: By learning the best practices for sustainable and ethical procurement, procurement teams can deliver on both regulatory and company policy targets and improve the corporate brand image.
Trained procurement professionals prevent costly disruptions and enhance the corporate brand as a risk-averse, good corporate entity.
Building Supplier Relationships for Long-Term Success
Strong supplier relationships are part of a resilient supply chain and training to improve can help manage these relationships. Training in procurement provides skills for negotiation and communication in both parties building a relationship to last.
- Effective Negotiation: Better procurement negotiation training leads to better terms and long-term supplier relationships, cost saving.
- Clear Communication: Training suppliers on building strong relationships allows for vulnerability and trust to grow this allows for both parties to deal with disruptions.
- Value from Supplier Partnerships: Growing, partnership, growth and added value. Allow suppliers to prioritise partners and create deals and cater to partner needs through innovation.
You have to take relationship management seriously if you want your company to foster great partnerships that will make you reliable and competitive in the dog-eat-dog world.
Conclusion
Leveraging contemporary market knowledge, well-considered contracting, intelligent risk management and constructive collaboration with your supply base, your procurement professionals/organisation have the potential to deliver the greatest support and impact on the performance of your business.
For enterprises that want to prosper, procurement training is strategic. It’s a strategy that enables procurement to maintain competitiveness, to accommodate change and to contribute significantly to the enterprise, supporting continued prosperity and sustainability.
