A Medius perspective on the CPO Viewpoint results

In this exclusive guest blog, Medius’ Chief Operations Manager, Marcus Willbourn, discusses some of the key insights discovered in the recently launched CPO Viewpoint research.

CPO Viewpoint certainly highlighted some surprising and unsurprising issues between procurement and other internal departments which I believe presents a huge opportunity for change within organizations.

The perception from other departments is that they feel they don't work as closely with procurement as procurement thinks they do, highlighting a lack of business-wide procurement based drivers and goals.

A particularly surprising result is the variance in numbers when it comes to seeing supplier selection as a joint decision - 24% in procurement compared to a mean of 5.3% from the other departments, identifies a stark discrepancy over the level of perceived teamwork.

The misalignment shows through to us here at Medius, where we see company's maverick spend mainly attributed to one-off vendors. Procurement's role should play a major part in controlling this and the results throughout the report help to clarify the issues they are up against when it comes to dealing with the other departments - and why these issues occur.

Another area of concern is the spending priorities of each department. There is no overlap and it highlights a totally autonomous set of objectives. It's critical for procurement to get on the same page as other departments regarding what they intend to spend their money on and how they can help them to achieve greater value from these budgets without removing control.

Positively, however, all departments agree that they see value in procurement becoming more strategic and less administrative in the future. And while they may not see benefit of that strategic value right now, they do think that it will add more value to the organization in due course.

Not only has CPO Viewpoint identified the perception gaps between procurement and its stakeholders - it's also opened up opportunity for implementation of better communication and collaboration, ultimately providing organizations with the insights to learn, develop and grow.

The CPO Viewpoint research highlights the above issues and more. We'll be continuing our CPO Viewpoint research series with future surveys, webinars and insight documents. If you would like to hear about these too, please register for our newsletter here.