Essential skills for modern procurement teams
By Privesan Naidoo
Technological advances in the procurement industry will result in automating even the most complicated processes in the near future, which will save time and free up resources to unlock new opportunities. With these advances there will be less emphasis on hard skills, but there will be a shortage of soft skills, which will become more and more relevant. Procurement professionals will thus increasingly need to master soft skills to ensure a long-term career.
Deloitte’s recent Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey 2018 found that 51% of procurement leaders do not believe that they have the capability in their teams to deliver their procurement strategy. The same survey found that 72% of procurement leaders spend less than 2% of their budget training and developing their teams. Only 16% of procurement leaders chose to develop digital skills as the main focus of their teams in 2018. Teams’ main areas of focus seem to fall to technical procurement skills (41%) and soft skills (36%).
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