If procurement doesn’t act as a pipeline for innovation coming from the supply base, a business can die. Or how about another way – if procurement doesn’t listen to suppliers warnings, it can be painfully slow to jump when cracks start to form in the market. When you look at companies that failed, you have to ask: did they listen to suppliers?

A lot of this is about ensuring that we align and standardise systems and processes to ensure that we leverage the scale of the company more effectively and reduce duplication of effort. This is in line with the efforts in the rest of the business where there is a strong focus to reduce duplication whilst ensuring flexibility to meet local market needs. But standardisation can have other applications, particularly in CSR.

It’s an easy mistake to feel sceptical of the idea of SRM – ‘sure, we do that’ you sometimes hear a weary CPO say, as if it were a computer programme that once you’d installed, would hum away and keep relationships at an agreeable point.

When Detlef Schultz, CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company spoke on a Procurement Leaders Thought Leaders webinar last month about the journey the company has been on to attract and develop the best talent in its procurement organisation, it was with a mixture of pragmatism and ambition that he laid out his own ethos on talent management.

Are engineers’ brains wired differently? Their ability to see problems and solutions in a way unlike anyone else is both extremely valuable to a business and potentially a source of frustration. Which means the effectiveness of procurement in turning their innovative ideas into a reality can be a game-changer.

It happened during the last recession and it’s happening now: businesses are having to look harder for ways to save money, especially now as spiralling costs consistently apply pressure across industry. But one thing that’s potentially different this time is the progress the green agenda has made.

Lamar Chesney, EVP and CPO for SunTrust banks is a good person to speak to if you want an honest view on how and why procurement needs to behave more strategically. He doesn’t mince his words either: “Often procurement talks about still not getting a seat at the table. Often that’s because they’re still not thinking and acting the right way.”

How much is procurement about technical ability and how much about interpersonal skills? It depends who you ask, but having spoken to several CPOs recently on the topic, an interesting third consideration came in: language.