Closing the procurement skills gap in the mobile workplace

The role of pro­cure­ment con­tin­ues to evolve and the expec­ta­tions that organ­i­sa­tions have of procurement’s con­tri­bu­tion have increased as they become increas­ing­ly reliant on sup­pli­ers to sup­port the busi­ness.

Our research indi­cates it is those teams that focus on retain­ing and devel­op­ing their tal­ent over time in a sys­tem­at­ic and struc­tured man­ner which tend to per­form the best.

For more than 30 years we have been assess­ing the skills of pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als, iden­ti­fy­ing the trends in pro­cure­ment, and build­ing skills with­in teams to ensure they adapt to chang­ing expec­ta­tions and have the nec­es­sary skills to per­form.

Our online assess­ment tool has now been com­plet­ed by more than 20,000 pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als work­ing in 1,000 organ­i­sa­tions across 100 coun­tries. This data set offers an amaz­ing insight into the skills and capa­bil­i­ties of pro­cure­ment pro­fes­sion­als, and iden­ti­fies how learn­ing pref­er­ences have changed over time.

The plat­form hosts a wide vari­ety of e‑learning cours­es across a range of pro­cure­ment com­pe­ten­cies

Our data shows more work is need­ed in terms of devel­op­ing the skills and capa­bil­i­ties that equip peo­ple to per­form this more “strate­gic” pro­cure­ment role suc­cess­ful­ly.

Core skills such as price and cost analy­sis, a reflec­tion of the teams’ abil­i­ty to dri­ve prof­it con­tri­bu­tion, show con­sid­er­able weak­ness with­in many teams.

We have also wit­nessed much change in the way peo­ple wish to access learn­ing, choos­ing to spend small­er amounts of time, but in high­er fre­quen­cy. Indi­vid­u­als are also wish­ing to access a greater vari­ety of resources than ever before as con­fi­dence in online learn­ing has grown.

Analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion of our data set data reveals the fol­low­ing facts:

As a con­se­quence, the for­mat of learn­ing inter­ven­tions has become more var­ied and the deploy­ment of skills devel­op­ment pro­grammes more com­plex. Increas­ing­ly, pro­grammes incor­po­rate e‑learning and organ­i­sa­tions want hands-on sup­port in coach­ing their peo­ple to apply new skills.

While the more tra­di­tion­al class­room train­ing con­tin­ues to be a pop­u­lar medi­um for prac­tis­ing new skills in a safe envi­ron­ment, it is tech­nol­o­gy which is at the fore­front and is increas­ing­ly used to enable col­lab­o­ra­tion.

With greater access to iPads, tablets, phone apps and mobile devices, peo­ple no longer need to be tied to their desk or indeed a class­room to learn. Our clients specif­i­cal­ly want and need access to mobile learn­ing for their teams to make bet­ter use of down­time in air­ports, on flights or trains and so on.

At ArcBlue, our Pro­cure­ment Hub has been devel­oped to enable knowl­edge shar­ing among teams. The com­mu­ni­ty func­tion encour­ages peo­ple to engage with one anoth­er inside and out­side their own busi­ness, shar­ing knowl­edge and expe­ri­ences as well as hav­ing access to advice from our own team of experts.

The plat­form hosts a wide vari­ety of e‑learning cours­es across a range of pro­cure­ment com­pe­ten­cies and is com­ple­ment­ed by ques­tion­naires, tools and tem­plates, assess­ments and arti­cles.

To find out more about our range of pro­cure­ment ser­vices please vis­it  www.arcblueglobal.com or e‑mail us at arcblue.uk@arcblueglobal.com