The Widening Talent Gap: How to Groom the Next Generation

The era of procurement professionals as passive order-takers is long gone. They are more than just negotiators and purchase decision-makers. As the demands on procurement teams increase, so does the need for skilled and adaptable professionals. This blog delves into the critical aspects of elevating procurement excellence, exploring how we should proactively engage in the role, redefine the profession, and groom an emerging generation of procurement professionals in becoming more future-ready.

The outlook of our procurement landscape may not seem promising as more than 80% do not show confidence in having adequate talent to meet the future demands of the function and unlocking the potential of professionals is an uphill challenge.In this post-event blog, we hear from Dr Christina Ooi, Elaine Chen, and Ter Long Tay about their expert insights on the step-by-step approach in identifying and nurturing talent, building a robust training framework, and leverage technology to enhance learning and development.

Embracing a Procurement’s Role: Will We Ever Be Ready?

Today’s procurement prospects will never be the same as tomorrow’s. As effective leaders, we do not wait for a talent to be "ready". A talent will never be 100% ready for any role. Christina stresses that what matters is to gauge the talent's soft skills (EQ, empathy, communication, persuasion, relationship building, etc.) in a special project assigned, and see how he/she brings the team together to deliver the given targets.

One of the blueprints in successfully building a procurement dream team is conducting skills assessment to get your leg up in the talent game. As reiterated by Elaine, developing a procurement skill-based framework based on your team structure and resource capability per grade and function are important. This will cover both technical skills e.g. category planning, strategic sourcing, negotiation, analytics or P2P operation and soft skills e.g. stakeholder management, leadership, communication, executive communication (which can be benchmarked against industry best practice).

Preparing the Next Generation for the Road Ahead: Grooming Our Young Talent

As the procurement function evolves, it has highlighted the importance of unearthing the potential of young procurement leaders in meeting the growing expectations of the dynamic role, from communicating with business stakeholders to strategizing their pro-active response in risk-mitigation activities.

In many organizations today, Procurement is seen as the do-er of administrative tasks with heavy workload of multitude of processes & procedures. Christina mentioned that this perception needs to be changed. Effective leaders must be bold and intentional to promote Procurement as a profession both internally (to key business leaders and stakeholders of other departments, and to own Procurement teams) and externally to third parties e.g. Suppliers.

She went on to elaborate that the role of the CPO is to ensure that Procurement plays the role of a Business Partner, who engages with stakeholders and has intelligent conversations about their business needs & requirements, at the same table. By outsourcing administrative work to external third parties & adoption of AI, our Procurement teams can play their Business Partner role and realign their function to focus more on strategic Procurement (leveraging on AI for process optimization and automation, for instance).

With the rapid pace of digitalization and AI-adoption, Ter Long shared that other than building deep capabilities of procurement skill sets and, the sector & domain knowledge, understanding the business of your organization is crucial so that you can better use digital & AI in procurement to achieve better outcomes and unlock value for your business. While certifications may seem to have out phased, he believes that they remain relevant for specific skill sets and competency that requires formal training although proficiency would need to be built through OTJ training. E.g. SRM, Negotiations, Sustainability related, data analytics, and related digital & AI skills, etc.

Rebranding the Profession: More than Just Scanning through Paychecks

Christina stated, “Procurement is the profession of the future. Grab this opportunity of looking at this profession seriously. This profession is dynamic and fast evolving to provide the required expertise and skills to contribute to the positive results of the business. It is moving beyond just cost management, into value creation, relationship building, negotiation, creative thinking, strategic orientation.”

In the past, Procurement may have been seen and treated as a back office, administrative, transactional and operational function. That is why it is not a sexy profession as compared to functions such as Marketing, Sales, Engineering, Corporate Strategy.

To promote the profession as one that has fundamental value to the organization, we need to see them as

(a) the internal Procurement consultant who has expertise in all aspects of Procurement.

(b) the Business Partner to advise and assist stakeholders in the other functions on their third-party procurement needs and requirements. This is beyond the role of a "buyer".

Online Training: When and Where Do We Need It?

Ter Long believes that virtual training is useful when learning is carried out “one-way”, with resources for employees to view, download and learn on their own pace. Elaine also mentioned that younger team members may prefer online training like LinkedIn training.

For skills development, procurement leaders need to consider the following factors when rolling out online training programs for their teams:

(a) type and length of training.

(b) procurement maturity of your team.

(c) the roles & responsibilities of your team; and

(d) team composition

If most of your team members are in the operational and transactional roles, then plan for all of them to undergo that basic training. So, it could be more than 20% of your team.

If you wish to train your teams in leadership skills, focus on the first line managers and experienced managers (managers who report to senior managers). For your top talent (10% of your team), focus on the soft skills to supplement their hot (technical) skills.

Finding the Right Mix: Outsourcing VS In-House Talent

Christina believes that the scope of procurement services that are outsourced needs to be clearly delineated. In today's day and age, downstream procurement services (tactical, fulfillment, non-strategic) should continue to be the outsourced scope. However, the strategic (upstream) procurement roles & responsibilities must be retained in-house.

As much as third-party procurement specialists may allow firms to perform benchmark-driven negotiations and data-powered decisions, insourcing talent will provide organizations with more control over their operations. That is why effective leaders must continue to invest in lifelong learning per 70-20-10 model to focus on on-the-job learning. The war for good talent will continue to rage on with passing time, but a combination of both will ensure the team stays aligned with their business needs.

Our Contributors:

Dr. Christina Ooi, Former CPO, Speaker, Published Author

Elaine Chen, VP, Global Procurement, SATS

Ter Long Tay, Chief of Government Procurement, Ministry of Finance Singapore