Follow this feed throughout the Procurement Leaders’ World Procurement Congress to keep up with the presentations and roundtables from the London Hilton on Park Lane. You can follow the event on Twitter using #wpc.

The owner of the ‘Procurement Leader Award’, Delphi procurement chief Sidney Johnson makes no bones about it, you have to strive to be the best at knowing how to provide value to the organization.

As we steer the development of our procurement functions in this new age, we can no longer afford to be myopic in our approach towards external relationship management, says Diageo’s Ryan Nied.

Weary CPOs often reflect, fairly or unfairly, that the essence of procurement, when you get down to it, hasn’t changed a huge amount over the last decade.

It seems like a ridiculous question, but as occasional news reports show, global supply chains can be a shadowy affair. Time to shed some light perhaps.

Put your predictions away, no one knows what will happen this year. Earthquakes, massive mergers, collapsing currencies; the story will be shaped by any number of x-factors. But instead of crystal balls, we can look for some of the likely sources of intrigue in 2013.

The shaky recovery that has reared its head in some parts of the global economy continues to divide analysts opinion on what businesses are going to be facing over the next six months. As you’d expect though, recovery or not, the concerns of procurement chiefs have mutated into a difficult combination of global risk, talent and top-line influencing agendas, like CSR - all of which reared their heads this week.

Barbara Kux’s rumoured departure from Siemens should give a few pause for thought. On paper at least, Kux has had a remarkable 5 years - but if she is on her way out, what does she leave behind?

The question that companies are often confronted with is whether they have learned lessons from the floods and earthquakes and revolutions that left them short on parts and scrambling to minimize the impact on revenue. But its not necessarily the right question.

As you might expect, there’s an American flavo(u)r to this week’s news. Not just the attention-sucking elections, but the Procurement Leaders Boston Forum too. Now, after the dust has settled on a hectic couple of weeks, there’s plenty to consider both Stateside and beyond.