Talent Management - Way to Competitive Procurement

Procurement needs to alter and enhance its operations every day to influence stakeholders and attain increased value. One of the most important keys to achieve this goal is RIGHT PROCUREMENT TALENT. The article describes the current trends and existing challenges prevailing in procurement talent management, the measures adopted by several organizations to overcome this challenge and the necessity to address talent crisis as an issue at present for a sustainable procurement in future. Companies that once used to view procurement department as a tactical buying team have now realized procurement's importance as a strategic partner within the organization.

Service delivery and timeliness were once Procurement's primary slogan; whereas now it has become cost savings and process efficiency. Consequently, the procurement talent assessment that was at a basic level based on primary skill areas is observing a shift towards stringent and competitive assessment to attract, retain and manage best-of-the-world talents. From the talent pools' perspective, the creamy layer of talents who consider procurement as a career option prefer consulting jobs to real time procurement/sourcing roles. One of the significant reasons is the attractive remuneration offered by former when compared to the later.

Also, it is difficult and time consuming to move up the ladder as it requires extensive experience to be able to get into the managerial positions in procurement. At the end, procurement is still viewed as not so interesting and challenging area to work. From organizations' perspective, while they are still striving to well define strategic sourcing and adopt advanced category management approach, identification of right talent in terms of category expertise and framing a clear development path is highly challenging.