Effective Stakeholder Engagement

by  —  July 21, 2017   
Procurement
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Most sourcing projects succeed as a result of an excellent collaboration and cooperative engagement between Procurement and the Stakeholders.

However, in many scenarios these two parties are not in sync and there is a high degree of misalignment due to conflicting objectives, or the desired outcome of the sourcing activity.

More often than not, the stakeholders will hold this view that Procurement will be all about costs reduction, which may not necessarily support the requirements and of the stakeholders.

So what can Procurement do to be able to overcome this issue and successfully deliver a sourcing project with the greatest enterprise value ?

  1. Demonstrate a good understanding of the stakeholder’s business and objectives
    • Sit down and understand the task and the objective that need to be delivered. Learn what is important and desired outcome , what are their constraints, and how procurement can help from their own perspective.
    • Active participation right from the scope development and suggest ways to measure supplier performance.
  2. Increase Stakeholder’s awareness of Procurement activities that support the delivery of their objectives
    • Negotiations should not just revolve around reducing cost but also to improve quality, delivery or performance.
    • Show a genuine interest to support and help, be involved.
    • Benchmark to understand what other companies are doing and suggest these best practices.
    • Introduce new suppliers that not just offers cost savings but one that can bring innovation or introduce best in class processes.
  3. Expand the scope of engagement with stakeholders.
    • After a project is delivered, check how things go. Not be engaged only when there are commercial issues.
    • Be involved in continuous improvements
    • Be involved in suppliers performance reviews and identify opportunities for improving efficiencies.
    • Build and nurture relationship, such as scheduling regular catch up to share learnings from previous projects and plan for future requirements.

Being proactive in regularly engaging stakeholders before, during, and after sourcing process will increase Procurement’s ability to deliver not only cost leadership but also best value to the company.