Why Can’t I Find Top Supply Management Talent? (Repost)

This post originally ran four years ago today. But it’s relevance has not waned.

The simple answer: you’re looking for a resource that is so rare it may not even exist! And I’m not the only one who thinks so. After talking with a number of thought leaders over the years it’s become clear that this is the most common reason Supply Management organizations can’t find talent. (Note that this is only the case with respect to “find”. The reasons a Supply Management organization can’t hire talent or keep talent are different.)

As Supply Management has become more and more challenging, the average reaction of a supply management organization has been to continually augment the job description of a supply manager to the point where the individual is expected to not only be a jack of all trades but master of all. This has resulted in a search for senior buyers with an eclectic collection of skills and experience so rare that you can probably count the number of global supply professionals around the globe that make the grade. For example, whereas the average job description for a senior buyer ten to fifteen years ago might have looked like:

  • good communication skills
  • college degree
  • negotiation experience
  • buying experience in chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and energy
  • some supervisory experience

Today’s average job description for a senior buyer looks like:

  • great communication skills
  • excellent writing skills
  • master’s degree with 10 years experience, PhD preferred
  • expert in negotiations with a global supply base
  • buying experience in manufactured goods, services, IT & Telecommunications, legal, marketing, and temporary labour
  • supervisory experience of global business teams and outsourced services
  • buying experience in Europe and Asia
  • speaks English, Hindi, and Mandarin fluently
  • experienced in contract drafting
  • expertise in import/export requirements of the US, the EU,
    India, and China
  • in-depth knowledge of REACH, WEEE, RoHS, and similar regulations
  • expert in should cost models, TCO models, and global logistics models
  • experienced user of e-Sourcing and e-Procurement applications and expert in e-Negotiations and award optimization
  • expert in spend analysis
  • great project management skills
  • risk management skills
  • working capital management skills
  • financial reporting experience
  • innovative and capable of leading cross-functional innovation teams
  • NPD experience
  • implemented multiple successful SRM initiatives
  • experience with CSR and sustainability initiatives
  • expert at market intelligence
  • high CQ
  • great leadership skills
  • adept at navigating regulatory issues
  • speaks techie
  • etc.

See the problem?

If you don’t, think about it for a while.

Or, better yet, to get a clearer picture, check out “The Chief Procurement Officer Job Description: An Overview” co-authored by yours truly and the maverick over on the new Spend Matters CPO site as well as the follow-on posts:

  • CPO Job Description: A Procurement Leader
  • CPO Job Description: Primary Responsibilities
  • CPO Job Description: Picking Procurement Technology
  • CPO Job Description: Managing Procurement Staff
  • CPO Job Description: Developing Procurement Staff
  • CPO Job Description: Aligning Procurement With Other Business Functions
  • CPO Job Description: Budget Management

Fifty-Five Years Ago Today

Theodore H. Maiman operates the first functioning optical (ruby) laser at Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, and making possible all of the technologies we use on a daily basis including, but not limited to, optical drives, laser printers, barcode scanners, and, most importantly, finer-optics. There would be no modern information technology without the laser, and we’d still be on electronic bulletin boards if we had to still dial up to the internet over copper.

What do you think LOLCats?

Best Invention. Evah!!!

Geopolitical Damnation 28: Customs Acts

Customs is the agency, authority, or regulatory body in a country that is responsible for collecting tariffs on, and controlling the flow of goods in, and out, of the country. While there is nothing wrong with, or damning about, controlling the flow of goods, as it ensures that products entering and leaving are safe, or collecting tariffs, as that is how many countries acquire the taxation revenue they need, the flow has to be understandable. [Moreover, import tariffs are one of the earliest forms of tax in many countries. For example, in the beginning, there were three types of taxes in the US, poll taxes (which is a type of head tax or per-person tax that pre-dated modern income tax), property taxes, and import taxes.]

Nor is there anything wrong with, or damning about, creating regulations and acts that clearly define the purpose of a customs agency, the authority it has, the documentation it requires, the taxes that can be levied, and the penalties it can apply for non-compliance. The damnation comes into play when the number of sheets of paper required to capture the rules, regulations, and constant updates to the regulations exceed the quantity of goods flowing into, and out of, a country.

For example, Brazil once updated its HTS code, that defines the import tax rates on different types of goods, 80 times in a single year. But its not just the plethora of confusing HTS codes, associated rulings, and updates that an organization needs to keep track of (which, globally, can require 2 Million data warehouse updates a year), it’s the dozens of regulations that each country subjects importers and exporters to.

For example, in the US, an organization involved in global trade has to be intimately familiar with, at a minimum, the following acts:

  • Trade Act
    that allows the President to negotiate trade agreements on behalf of the US for presentation to Congress.
  • Customs Modernization Act
    that amended the Tariff Act of 1930 and introduced “informed compliance” and “shared responsibility” that requires traders to provide CBP with accurate and timely classification, necessary data for appraisal, and to ensure adequate security of goods
  • North American Free Trade Agreement
    which is a free trade agreement between Canada, the United States, and Mexico
  • 10+2
    which is short for the Importer Security Filing introduced in 2009 that requires importers to notify CBP of impending cargo imports 24 hours in advance
  • C-TPAT
    which is short for the Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism, a voluntary supply chain security program focused on improving the security of private companies’ supply chains with respect to terrorism

And may also need to be familiar with dozens of other acts, including:

  • Generalized System of Preferences
    which is a preferential tariff system which provides for a formal system of exemption from the most favoured nation principle and the more general rules of the WTO
  • U.S.-Caribbean Basin Trade Partnership Act
    which forms a trade agreement with the 23 independent countries of the Caribbean basin
  • International Traffic in Arms Regulations
    which controls the export and import of defence-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List (USML)
  • Lacey Act
    which prohibits trade in wildlife, fish, and plants that have been illegally taken, possessed, transported or sold.
  • Reciprocal Tariff Act
    which replaced the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act which raised tariffs on over 20,000 imported goods to record levels in 1930 and which paved the foundation for modern HTS schedules

And this is just to manage import and export in the US. Some countries have lists of acts that are just as extensive. Now imagine your company does business in 100 countries. It’s damnation to the power of 100!

Contract Lifecycle Management I: Do You Know What It Is?

Today’s post is co-authored by the prophet.

CLM, short for Contract Lifecycle Management, is arguably one of the most snooze-inducing acronyms in the Supply Management space, but yet also one of the most important. That’s because proper CLM not only overlaps both the Sourcing (or Source-to-Contract [S2C]) and Procurement (or Procure-to-Pay [P2P]) cycles (for strategic sourcing of buy-side categories), but also influences the full Source-to-Settle (S2S) / Source-to-Pay (S2P) cycle and provides a partial foundation for risk management, performance management, change management, and supplier [relationship] management (as well as in-depth post-mortem reviews that increase organizational knowledge and effectiveness for years to come).

Moreover, good CLM is arguably the foundation for enterprise CLM, or e-CLM, which goes beyond just buy-side contract support and also includes sell-side contract support to cover the transit of goods from supplier to customer, or, as us network modellers like to say, from source to sink.

But just what is CLM? And where does it fit in Supply Management? According to Gartner, it is a solution and process for managing the life cycle of contracts created and/or administered by or impacting the company. (Source) But what does that mean? And more importantly, what does that mean to you as a Supply Management professional? (Let’s be honest — we don’t care much about sales support because there’s nothing to sell if nothing is purchased, manufactured, or created for delivery. Supply Management comes first.)

In simple terms, Gartner’s definition means that, in order to effectively manage your contracts you need the right processes and the right platforms to support those processes. Chances are your organization, which has been contracting since its inception, has, at least, a decent understanding of the right processes but needs a lot of help identifying the right platforms. But where do you turn?

Vendors? They have a great definition of their platform and how they believe it will help you, but with such a narrow view, how do you know it’s right for you?

Analysts? They have a broader definition, as each of the big firms have their own definition of a Contract Management (CM) suite, but this definition is still not a great one. First of all, it’s heavily influenced by the vendors they talk to the most. Second, and most important, their definition changes from quadrant to quadrant and report to report, sometimes arbitrarily, all based upon which vendors they believe should be in the quadrant and which vendors they believe should not, all based on size, suite, or some other half-baked definition of CM. “Should-haves” become “must haves”, “must haves” become “should haves”, and the baseline requirements for vendor consideration, such as suite breadth, vertical support, minimum customer counts, and even minimum revenue ebb and flow with the tide.

Peers? How do you know they know any more than you? Unless they are in the Hackett Group top 8% or the Supply Chain Top 100, chances are they don’t. Remember, one out of every two companies still does not have modern sourcing or procurement systems. And even if a peer has a system, and even if that system isn’t one that just happened to be bought at the word of an analyst or the salesmanship of a vendor, it still doesn’t mean it’s the right system for your organization.

Professional Organizations? Organizations like the ISM and CIPS tend to focus on process, not platforms. Members, not vendors.

The reality is that you don’t really have anywhere to turn for a good, solid, stable definition that you can bank on and measure against. That’s why, for the first time, Sourcing Innovation and Spend Matters, the leading independent authorities on Supply Management, have come together in a joint effort led by the prophet and the doctor to, once and for all, define the core Supply Management platforms, starting with CLM, the most misunderstood of the Supply Management misfits.

Starting this week, over on Spend Matters Pro [membership required], the first part of Contract Lifecycle Management 101 which introduces an in-depth eight-part series that defines CLM in detail is available for your reading pleasure. This landmark joint-authored series outlines its historical, and typical, implementations, details the must-haves, should-haves, and nice-to-haves of a core CM (Contract Management) platform, specifies must-have and should-have integrations, and provides some tips on how to find the right provider. This series is the first in a set of landmark series (which will also include series on Third-Party Management [3PM] / Supplier Relationship Management [SRM], e-Sourcing, and e-Procurement) which will define once and for all what the technology platforms should do, why the platforms should do it, and provide a standard, open, public benchmark against which all vendors will be measured. As such, the doctor strongly encourages you to head over and check it out.

Influential Damnation 99: Conferences

After SI’s recent posts that asked Are Conferences Perpetuating Supply Chain Stasis? and made A prediction from the doctor with regards to Big Procurement Events, you might have been expecting conferences to make the list of damnations.

If you were, you get a virtual fortune cookie. If you weren’t, better luck next time.

The reality is that conferences are damning for all involved parties except one. They are damming for you the attendee. They are damning for the presenters trying to educate you (or not). They are damning for the vendors trying to demo their wares. They are damning for the analysts and bloggers trying to take something away to share with your peers. The only people they are not damning for is the organizers fattening their pocket books at the expense of vendor and participant alike.

As a practitioner, you are damned because the organizers are most concerned with making the event a success, which, in their book, is profitable. As a result, if there are not enough presentations of high caliber, they will take proposals of moderate caliber, and if there are not enough proposals of moderate caliber, they will take proposals of low caliber. And if their focus is Sourcing, they will take Sourcing vendors as lead sponsors and exhibitors first, but if there are not enough Sourcing vendors, they will take Procurement vendors. And if there are not enough Procurement vendors, any Supply Chain vendor with supplier data collection capability makes the cut. And so on.

As a vendor, you are damned because some of these events can cost you upwards of $20,000, with no guarantees. There’s no guarantee that the attendees are going to be interested in your product. Even if they are, there’s no guarantee that they are of the right seniority or have any ability to make a buying decision. There’s no guarantee you’re going to get a booth in a high traffic area. And if you get a presentation slot in a multi-track conference, there’s no guarantee anyone is going to show up.

As an analyst, there’s no guarantee the presentations are going to say anything new (worth reporting). (This blogger knows for a fact that some presenters on the junket circuit give almost the same presentation year after year after year.) There’s no guarantee that the vendors are going to be presenting technologies you expect to be covering. And there’s no guarantee that the attendees are going to be willing to share anything worth covering either.

In the end, only the organizer is guaranteed to win.