Posted: Friday, July 13, 2007, 10:59AMSpotlight shines on the stars of procurement
Awards highlight how far the profession has come. Mark Perera, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF.
A milestone was reached in the development of the procurement profession when, one evening in May, more than 250 people gathered at a prestigious London location to recognise the achievements of organisations and CPO-level executives throughout Europe.
The first European Leaders In Procurement Awards were a huge success, with entries from several of the biggest and best-known global companies and a glittering array of talent among the winners and runners-up. The assembled CPOs enjoyed the surroundings and took the opportunity, as procurement people do, of catching up with colleagues and sampling some of the fine wines on offer. The networking element of the ELP Awards and of the ELP Forum which followed the next day, was a key benefit and one that many attendees commented on enthusiastically.
One of the guests was BT Group's CPO Meryl Bushell whose team member, Lucy Haighway, received the highly-valued Future Leader Award. Bushell is an esteemed procurement leader in her own right and in this issue we have showcased her achievements in our profile feature (The Career Communicator, page 20). Bushell's main attribute is an immense facility to deal with people effectively, demonstrated in many ways throughout her career. Indeed, as we discovered, her proving ground was a spell spent dealing with customers' enquiries over their bills.
If you can make a success of that, as Meryl did, it seems pretty certain you can make a success of anything.
Meryl commented in her interview about the importance of taking time to learn from other organisations, a point also made by Steen S Karstensen of the Denmark-based
shipping giant, Maersk, in our feature following up the survey by consultants McKinsey in our last issue (World-class co-ordination, page 37).
Our latest executive roundtable discussion provided, as always, a fascinating insight into the thinking among procurement leaders on a topic of relevance.
The role played by procurement in mergers and acquisitions proved fertile ground for an exchange of views among participants, several of whom had their own first-hand
experiences to relate. The most important point to become clear in the course of the debate was just how much procurement has to offer in these situations.
As participants commented, procurement is in a prime position to form a bridge between organisations as they come together. As a function dealing with all aspects of the business as a whole, procurement is a potential treasure-house of knowledge and experience available to senior management.
Procurement, as Gerd Kerkhoff says in his piece on global sourcing, has the potential to boost value in the long-term (Procurement's place in the world, page 42). But for this to happen, as Kerkhoff also says, senior managements must give procurement top priority in their considerations.
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