I read a very startling article this weekend on SupplyManagement.com. A recent study across 550 financial directors and CFOs from large organizations in the US, UK, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and France found that only 17% of CFOs believe procurement heads deserve a place on the company board.
That’s right, 83% of CFOs surveyed essentially believe — to quote Adrian Done, a professor at the Navarra IESE Business School and supply chain expert, that procurement deserves nothing more than a “kick in the face“. Ouch. At a time when their top priority is to save money, this is how they view procurement? Let’s hope their replacements, when they eventually get fired or laid off when company performance goes down the drain because they did the usual blind cut across the board which irreparably damaged the business, are smarter than this.