Aligning procurement targets to company targets, supporting the business and delivering results. Easily said but not so easily achieved? In far too many situations procurement and finance functions find themselves not reaching set targets, or trying to reach targets that simply aren’t aligned with overall business targets. What happen then is frustrated managers and even more frustrated employees and perhaps some corners are being cut in order to achieve some results.
How can it be that procurement and finance (not focusing on core supply chain flows, treasury or cash management) in many aspects are still viewed as cost cutting functions? Isn’t there much more value to be found than costs to be cut? It is a challenge to measure those aspects and much easier to look at contract value and head count, but a lot is happening in the tools-market so let’s not loose hope!
In this interview Per Hill, CPO at Lantmännen – who have been in a big transformation phase for several years – share his view on, among other topics, the below questions:
- How can you increase strategic influence?
- How can you manage and drive change?
- How can you affect performance?
- How has procurement changed in the past years?
There has been a lot of talk about how to get a seat at the table – finding ways to create value surely is the way in which to gain greater influence – sitting at the table or not.
EBG offer a business to business professional meeting place each year called Source to Pay Summit, focusing on finding ways to create that value beyond short term cost cut