The AOP Linkfest took a couple of weeks hiatus for The Procurement Revolution. This week it returns, in a different format. I’m always experimenting, and like any good procurement pro, I love my data! If you have a couple of minutes to spare, I would really appreciate if could complete this anonymous survey so I that I can make the emails I send as valuable as possible. Thanks!
1.
MUST READ
I am a big believer in understanding what is important to our key stakeholders – what keeps them up at night – as we seek to better understand them and present a value proposition that aligns with their needs. I am always looking out for reports that give me an insight into what makes them tick.
Once a quarter, Deloitte survey’s the CFO community and publishes a CFO Signals report.
You can download the full report here as a PDF, or check out the executive summary.
A couple of things stand out to me. 52% of CFO’s globally state that they are biased towards revenue growth vs. 30% towards achieving cost savings. CFO’s also report a strong bias towards reinvesting cash generated back into the business over returning it to shareholders. So, revenue growth and reinvestment currently rank as high priorities than cost savings.
The other point that interested me was the divergence in responses for the UK – post Brexit – vs. the rest of the world. UK based CFO’s have cost savings and increasing cash flow at the top of their to-do list, preparing for more difficult times that CFO’s in other regions.
Lance Younger, Partner for Supply Chain at Deloitte UK shares more in his assessment: Brexit Looms Large – Deloitte CFO Survey 2016 Q3 – Procurement Implications.
2.
OTHER INTERESTING ARTICLES
The Future of Procurement, Explained to Your Children | Hans Casteels, Head of Procurement Advisory, IBM Canada.
We Are All Outcome Workers, Whether we Like it or Not | Phil Fersht, Founder & CEO, HfS Research
World-Class Procurement Generating More Than Twice ROI | MH&L Staff
Why the Traditional Procurement Skill-Set Won’t Make a CPO | Giles Breault, Co-Founder and Principal, The Beyond Group.
3.
PROCUREMENT RELATED NEWS
Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmstrom Win Nobel in Economics for Work on Contracts | Binyamin Appelbaum, New York Times.
SciQuest Names New CEO | Lauren Ohnesorge, Triangle Business Journal.
4.
THIS WEEK @ THE ART OF PROCUREMENT
I did something different this week – I separated a single interview into two different parts. I recently interviewed Chris Eyerman and Lynn Rideout of Denali Sourcing Services. We talked for over an hour about the things that we can do to build category management programs that are sustainable over the long term, once the initial low hanging fruit has been picked. Listen in:
Advanced Category Management (Part 1): Organizational Building Blocks
Advanced Category Management (Part 2): Category Manager Imperatives
5.
OTHER STUFF
The US Presidential election is part fascinating, part depressing and part train-wreck (mostly depressing & train-wreck…). However, if you are looking for podcasts to listen to in the run up to election day, I have two shows in my podcast app: FiveThirtyEight Elections and The Run Up (The New York Times). What are you listening to?
Staying on the topic of the White House, the Executive Office of the President released a report this week called Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence. Larry Dignan of ZDNet shares the main themes to ponder, while over at Wired, Scott Dadich interviews President Obama and Joi Ito of MIT on the findings contained within the report.
I had a lot to share today but that is all for another week!
Have a great weekend,
Philip Ideson
Art of Procurement
PS – please complete the survey 🙂
