What’s your appetite for risk?
Supply chain risk is increasing by the day, with 9 in 10 organizations at risk of a significant supply chain disruption over the next year and predictions that this will increase five-fold over the next five decades.
A survey commissioned by Zurich Insurance revealed that 80% of mid-sized UK businesses with annual revenues between £5million and £300million in a selection of major UK sectors consider their supply chains to be either very important or critical to their business. Top supply chain risk concerns for those surveyed include being dependent on a single supplier (33%), while 37% are concerned about product quality incidents.
With this in mind, at the eWorld Procurement and Supply event in September we put contract management in the spotlight, focusing on how procurement teams can minimize risk within their organizations.
How risk averse are procurement professionals?
Supply chain risk is a topic never far from a procurement professional’s mind, but just how closely does your risk profile marry up to your corporate position?
Introducing an eWorld first – we invited an expert graphologist to join us on our exhibition stand who analyzed delegates' handwriting to reveal their attitude to risk and to determine whether if procurement professionals in attendance were really the careful contract management type or more of a desk-drawer maverick.
Its no surprise to discover that our graphologist found that the delegates, whose handwriting was analyzed, were thoughtful, sensitive and careful. As for risk assessment, the scoring system ranged from +3 meaning ‘extremely cautious’ to -3 meaning ‘verging on reckless’ with 0 meaning a ‘balanced approach’ to risk assessment. No extreme scores were seen in the handwriting of delegates with most scores ranging around 0, either with +1 (slightly cautious) or -1 (prepared to take a slight risk).
Due to the type of organizations and role types present at the conference, our expert expected to see more + scores than were actually found, but was interested to discover that the highest release scores were found mainly among the more senior delegates.
Reducing Supply Chain Risks
One of the strategies employed by procurement functions in reducing risk is the adoption of Contract Management technology – we’ve seen great success in this arena amongst our clients and were delighted to welcome Global Operations Procurement Manager Joanna McCarthy from Eversheds to the eWorld stage. As one of the speaker session hosts, Joanna revealed the 5 Steps to Success when implementing new technologies, drawing on the team’s recent experience implementing Sourcing and Contract management suites.
