My readers on the other side of the pond are probably well aware that Sigi Osagie’s Procurement Mojo has been available since late last year, but since Amazon UK had it in book form well before COM and CA, my readers on this side of the pond may not have noticed yet.
Procurement Mojo is a bit of an uncharacteristic Procurement book in that it does not attempt to teach you what Procurement is, assuming you already know how to do your job. What it attempts to teach you is explain what Procurement does, which is a critical issue that needs to be addressed since
- Procurement is, in many organizations, still the Rodney Dangerfield (and still don’t get no respect)
- And most Procurement Pros don’t know how to sell the organization on the unrealized potential that Procurement can bring
Sure this topic has been addressed in such books as Charles Dominick and Soheila Lunney’s Procurement Game Plan, but never has an entire tome been dedicated to this topic and it’s a tome that’s badly needed. (Procurement people really should get sales training because it’s often easier to sell a freezer to an Eskimo than to sell the value of a Procurement Investment to anyone in the organization.)
The reality is that in order to even get noticed, you have to first build a Procurement Brand — and building a brand, especially for something that most people would rather stay invisible, is not easy. You can’t just decide to build a brand and start tomorrow. You need frameworks, process-based enablers, platform support, and good management — and it takes time to get all of this in place. Only then can you build what Sigi calls Procurement Mojo and get your message, and value, taken seriously.
SI will be doing a more detailed review later on, but for now, be it known that if you are looking for a way to build your Procurement brand, start by gettin’ Sigi with it!