Commerce Edge, SmartProcurement and Purchasing Index teamed up to present the last leg in this year’s “Procurement Professionals Update Breakfast Series” at the Astro-tech Conference Facility in Parktown, Johannesburg. Over 60 delegates registered to hear Bernie van Niekerk, CEO of the Commerce Edge Group, summarise the highly informative and relevant report published by the Centre for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS), the American P & SM Research Centre, in conjunction with AT Kearney, the professional procurement consulting firm.
The report was designed to promote a greater awareness among global procurement leadership of the major economic forces at play in the present and continuing economic uncertainty and which strategies (specifically 7) to adopt in countering the debilitating effects of the global melt-down in the financial markets.
Discussing Procurement in the next decade, van Niekerk identified some of the key influences on the economy in the Southern African region, such as the ANC (an agent of stability?), a shrinking skills pool, China, exchange rates, a commodity boom or bust?, Eskom, HIV, Industrial action and the IMF.
Globally one has to consider several other critical factors, such as demographic shifts, changing consumer demands, environmental pressures and dwindling natural resources.
Simply put, these factors pose short, medium and long term challenges that Procurement professionals must deal with within a framework that will ensure sustainable growth for an organisation.
Alan Low, CEO of Purchasing Index, the local benchmarking specialists, partnered Bernie at the podium and introduced delegates to and extremely valuable spend analysis tool available in SA. It is a highly versatile programme that enables licensed users to dig deeply into all the available data and generate useful and detailed reports to assist decision making at top board level. As an aside he pointed out that it is now estimated that the population of Gauteng will peak at 17-million in the year 2015, which was the population of South Africa only 50 years ago in 1960!
For those who couldn’t attend the good news is that the 3rd Annual SmartSourcing Conference will deal in detail with the following strategies, which will equip delegates with a sustainable framework:
1. Developing and implementing Leading Edge Category Strategies.
2. Leading practices in Tendering, Bid and Contract Management.
3. Designing and operating Multiple Supply Networks and Managing Multiple Supply Chains.
4. Leveraging Technology Enablers: Technology over the next decade and Supply Executive Goals for Technology.
5. Developing and managing suppliers, Supply Base Structuring, Collaborating Internally and Externally.
6. Attracting and Retaining Supply Management Talent.
7. Managing and Enabling the Supply Management Organisation, Outsourcing the Procurement Function, Centre led Models, measuring Organisational Performance.
PLUS 1: How to achieve the above within the Preferential Procurement (BEE) Objectives applied to the South African environment.
Seating is filling up fast and you are encouraged to attend. To register, contact the conference co- ordinator Erieka Santos on 0861 334 326 or mail her to: erieka@smartprocurement.net
