376: Driving a Growth Agenda - Going Beyond the Table Stakes w/ Philip Ideson

Art of Procurement

Traditionally, procurement has been focused on driving corporate profitability by putting pressure on suppliers, rationalizing specifications, and managing demand. While these strategies have delivered some benefits to the business, their diminishing returns came at the cost of procurement’s internal reputation. As procurement’s focus turns to top-line growth, they will have to change more than just their strategies and tactics before they can be successful.

This podcast is the last in a 4-part series focused on how procurement can contribute to efforts to restore corporate growth. In this episode, Host Philip Ideson shares why a focus on growth is so important to the future of the procurement profession before concluding the podcast series by sharing some of his key takeaways from the first three episodes.

In this episode, Philip wraps up the series by considering points such as:

• Why procurement doesn’t need to fix how we are perceived, so much as we need to address the attitudes, styles, and behaviors that have led to that perception
• How procurement can pivot to a focus on corporate growth, and what we need to understand about our organization before knowing which actions to take
• The opportunity associated with a partnership between procurement and sales, and which corporate KPIs this will allow procurement to contribute to