Surveys regularly ask Finance to rate Procurement effectiveness, but is this the right question to be asking? Maybe Procurement should be rating Finance effectiveness? After all, is it necessarily Procurement’s fault that there are usually noticeable gaps when the results of these surveys are published? Maybe, but maybe not.

The only way the gaps will close is if the root cause of the gaps is identified and addressed. Is Finance providing the necessary funding for the platforms, training, and resources that are required to effectively address all of the categories? Is the organization evaluating effectiveness against the right KPIs? Does the Procurement agenda align with the organizational agenda that Finance has a hand in shaping?

Now, I’m not saying it’s Finance’s fault, and I’m not saying it’s Procurement’s fault, but I’m saying there is a reason for the gap and the reason needs to be identified. Sometimes it will be a lack of effort or focus on Procurement’s part, sometimes it will be a lack of effort or focus on Finance’s part, but the doctor‘s guess is that more often than not it will not be anyone’s fault but be due to a lack of alignment.

As the maverick points out over on Spend Matters in his post on What Does the CFO think of Procurement, Procurement and Finance are misaligned in numerous ways, and this misalignment is costing companies a lot of money.

That’s why the maverick teamed up with ISM to conduct a new study on Procurement and Finance Alignment to help Procurement and Finance understand all the misalignment areas and the loss of value caused by this misalignment so that Procurement and Finance can work collaboratively to realign. the doctor had a chance to review, comment on, and contribute to the study before its release and can tell you that it’s well designed and well worth your time, especially since the average company will be able to complete the full study in about 15 minutes.

I strongly encourage every company, no matter how well they think their Procurement function is doing, to take this study which is designed not to assign blame but to detect areas of misalignment where Procurement and Finance can work together to improve performance.

Taking the study is easy. Simply e-mail the maverick at pierre (at) spendmatters (dot) com and you can get the study link and first access to the results.