A helping hand
It seems to me that procurement professionals are remarkably good at helping each other out. You want to, you enjoy it and, frankly, you’re just an incredibly helpful bunch.
And I’m not the only one who’s noticed.
Speaking
at the CIPS Annual Conference last year, Ellis Watson, managing director of newspapers at publisher DC Thomson and former CEO of Simon Cowell’s company SYCO, said he thought procurement professionals were very good at sharing ideas and best practice with one another and he advocated more of it.
“Within procurement there are no new things,” he said. “Just go out and find it. Talk to strangers. We should be a lot more forward, because people will be more direct.” You never know when a favour you pay a peer will be repaid, he added.
Gerry Walsh, who has just headed up procurement at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games and is a former CIPS president, made the same remark to me once. “Pay it forward,” he said. In other words, do the right thing and give your time to help people because the chances are you’ll need a favour back from them sometime.
But when you’re looking for help – perhaps with a new category you’ve taken on, an overseas market or a particular approach – how do you know who are the best people to ask? Do you use your existing network and call upon those you’ve met? Do you scan your LinkedIn contacts for suitable assistance or do you benchmark the best procurement performers in this particular area somehow?
We want to know.
If you’ve ever sought help from a peer, Supply Management wants to know how you went about it so we can share your tips and advice with all readers. So, go on, do what you do so well – help each other out by dropping us a reply below or emailing rebecca.ellinor@supplymanagement.com.
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No.
You are quite right in your assertion that procurement professionals are a helpful bunch. I belong to the Association of Cost Management Consultants (www.theacmc.co.uk) and we have a bulletin board where we can post questions to other members. Even though, in the strictest sense, we are all competing for business, we do try and help each other whenever we can. Sometimes we come across a particular problem with a client and/or supplier and most of the time our peers have come across the same problem and can provide advice. Even though I have been in the business for almost 14 years, I still find the ability to get free advice very useful. Sometimes it is me providing the advice!
Mark Frazer, Overheads UK Ltd