Procurement Strategy Priorities for Today’s CPOs

Recent research by The Hackett Group^®, a leading global strategy and operations consulting firm, found Chief Procurement Officers (CPOs) reporting procurement strategy priorities that center on cost and risk reduction, strategic alignment and transformation. Particular procurement strategy priorities most often cited included:

• Sustaining cost reductions achieved during the recession.
• Reducing price and availability risks in the supply chain.
• Improving the alignment between procurement strategy and enterprise business strategy.
• Leveraging supplier relationship management to get more value from the supply base.
• Better managing knowledge and information in order to support procurement transformation.
• Better understanding the organizational characteristics of top-performing procurement organizations.

The best procurement organizations are pursuing a procurement strategy that addresses not only the immediate challenges of the recent recession, but also forward-looking initiatives that will enable the procurement function to deliver maximum value to the enterprise as recession turns to recovery and growth.

The Hackett Group can help you develop and execute a high-value procurement strategy

The Hackett Group provides executive advisory programs and consulting services to help CPOs develop and execute a procurement strategy that drives maximum efficiency and effectiveness in the procurement function. Backed by our comprehensive best practices benchmarking database which captures the correlation between practice and performance at thousands of major companies around the world, The Hackett Group offers our clients empirically grounded insights into all facets of procurement strategy formation and implementation, including:

• Organizational design, spanning options such as business process outsourcing, offshoring, and global business services.
• Purchase-to-pay and source-to-settle process optimization, including benchmarking of current operations, application of best practices, and establishment of structures and capabilities to foster continuous process improvement.
• Talent management, targeting high value skills like supplier relationship management and supply market intelligence.
• Supply risk management.
• Systems selection and implementation.
• Aligning procurement strategy with broader enterprise strategies and initiatives.

The Hackett Group also delivers special expertise in supply chain design, inventory management, and cash flow analysis. Applying deep knowledge of supply chain best practices, we can help you optimize your whole operation from demand forecasting through to order fulfillment, enabling you to meet customer demand while minimizing inventory on hand.

To learn how The Hackett Group can help you develop a procurement strategy that drives operational excellence across the procurement function, contact us.