The Latest Supply Management Poll

Guest author: Guy Allen

The latest Supply Management Poll shows Stakeholder Relationships to be the number one priority for Procurement staff for 2013, with 45% of respondents identifying it as their major priority for the year. This was followed by 27% choosing Supplier Relationship Management, giving a total of 72% looking to improve relationships.

This brought two things to my mind; Firstly, surprise that this is still an issue - surely we've known for a long time that we need to work more closely and more effectively with key stakeholders and suppliers. After all, it has topped the poll for the last 3 years. Haven't we got sufficiently good at it that we can move our focus onto something else?

Then I had a second thought; Business is all about relationships.  This might seem a strange thing for someone who is an advocate to of eAuctions to say (see my BravoSolution Real World Sourcing Series presentation here), but the fundamental building block is people engaging with each other. 

I start my own business, Real World Sourcing, this week and it is blindingly apparent to me that I will have to spend a lot of time building a different type of relationship with the people I know if I want to be successful - you may well be hearing from me!

So don't sell your soul, do enter relationships as an equal; but you can't build a successful function (or business for that matter) without other people.