While far from a complete picture of what Procurement Mastery will look like in 2015, Accenture’s outlook for 2015 in their recent Compulsive Contributors report, identified three areas of emerging excellence which are among the foundations of Procurement Mastery for any organization that wants to make it to Next Level Supply Management. In brief, they were:

• Excellence in Risk Management
  Disruptions are becoming more common by the day as supply chains increase in length and complexity. If there was ever an appropriate use of the term “the new normal” (there isn’t, by the way), this would be it. Masters have to be very adept at identifying, predicting, detecting, and mitigating risks before they turn into full blown, costly, disruptions.
• Closed Loop Spend Management
  Leading Procurement organizations work closely with finance, manage supply and demand, and “close” the loop on the end-to-end spend cycle.
• Analytics
  Using data to understand what you are spending, with whom, on what, from where, what is being obsolesced before it is used, and what might not even be needed in the first place. Using data to understand supplier performance. And using data to predict what might happen next. The masters will embrace, and get value from, predictive analytics long before the contenders.
• A Transformed Workforce
  There is a talent management process in place that manages the full lifecyle, from recruitment through development to retirement. And the caliber of the talent, as a result of this program, is above the norm.