One of my pet peeves is people trumpeting that they are “outcomes focused”, when I hear that I supplant it with “I am a cowboy” (no insult intended for real cowboys). In this context, a cowboy is someone who appears to get good outcomes, but does so by bypassing all the right processes and methodologies designed to provide a lasting outcome. These are outcomes such as deploying a new system in record time, but then finding that it has major issues and needs extensive rework to keep functioning. I’ve walked into a number of businesses where my time has been consumed in fixing what the “outcomes focused” folk have “achieved”; poor contracts, no documentation, no history, bad vendor relationships, damaged reputations, wasted money, failed projects and even companies going bust.
The first stage of developing a roadmap to process efficiency is understanding all the steps both in the current model and in all best of breed models you can source, and really understanding the reasons behind the steps and the associated benefits. If you can confidently ensure a step is redundant, dump it. But if there is real benefit in a step, find a way to maximise the benefit while minimising the effort.
Having spent time in Public sector environments, I am well used to clients rolling their eyes at the number of controls associated with responsible Public Spending. The terms “hurdles”, “road blocks”, “bureaucracy”, “red tape” and “fun police” bombard the public sector procurement officer. The thing is, there are a lot of people reviewing policies, redesigning and redefining them to achieve a purpose. Controls are not put in place just to irritate the people who work within those controls, most are in fact there to benefit the end user. The key challenge is the effectiveness of communicating the aims and the purpose from the strategic level defining the controls, down to the operational level who have to implement them. Honestly though, ignorance is no excuse, procurement is procurement and everyone involved in procurement should make the effort to understand the basic steps that will drive the best outcome. Heck, if we all made that effort, there would be no need for policies and standards, it is all just common sense.
So what is PME4U all about then? It targets the best practice steps and stages a good procurement and contract management process must go through and aims to find smart ways of hitting those targets while removing unnecessary workload and delays. Along the way I hope to help understanding of why some steps must be completed and the risks, if not direct damage, skipping steps will create. The website blog covers subjects from simply reviewing your templates through to more complex options such as implementing a contracts management solution.
I went for a job interview once for a category managers role. The interview was punctuated by the stories of woe from the man who would be my manager outlining all the issues and the aspects of procurement that just don’t work very well. Tales of woe don’t worry me, in fact they get me excited because fixing issues is my bread and butter, what concerned me and lead to me walking away from the opportunity was the would be managers response to my question of “Where do you see the procurement function heading over the next couple of years?”
“That’s a good question?” he said with a note of surprise.
“That’s not a good start.” I thought.
It’s perfectly ok to have issues in your business processes, everyone does. What is not ok is not fully recognising the cause of those issues and having a plan to fix them. Start simple, tackle the obvious and basic issues, but have a long term aim to mitigate and remove all the challenges in conducting routine processes and develop the agility to handle the curve balls. Without a plan, you can never overcome those road blocks, hurdles and walls that limit the potential of your procurement function.