A decade ago we published What Does it Take to be a CPO? While we stand by our claim that Procurement Hasn’t Changed (even though the world has), we should make sure that the requirements for a CPO haven’t changed, because businesses have changed with the world (and maybe we missed something).
Instead of creating a laundry list of skills, we kept it short and sweet (because we co-authored a very long series on the CPO job description that ran on Spend Matters; it’s too bad that it disappeared in the site refresh of ’23).
- first become a Procurement Leader
- then understand the primary responsibilities
- support these responsibilities with the right Procurement technology
- use your leadership skills and technology platforms to both manage and develop staff and
- be sure to practice good budget management and align Procurement with the other business functions
- while focussing on continual learning and self improvement.
In other words, it’s about:
- leadership
- problem identification
- solution identification
- technology identification
- fiscal management
- continual learning and improvement
Moreover, as pointed out in the dialogue of a recent LinkedIn post, that’s what good Procurement leadership all comes down to: visibility into the problem, gaining an understanding, identifying a solution, finding the right technology to implement it, and having the leadership to make it all happen.
So the answer is the core requirements for being a good CPO haven’t changed in the last decade. You may approach the problem different, find a better solution, and use a different technology, but the fundamentals are still the same.