We recently talked with Peter Smith of Procurement Excellence, the Spend Matters UK/Europe blogger. It’s always reassuring when fellow procurement experts understand the power of putting the people rather than the process of procurement first and that systems used to manage those processes must be intuitive.
Speaking of Wax, Peter commented that “their marketing background perhaps explains a core belief; that “intuitiveness is fundamental”. For example, they look to replicate the ‘Amazon type’ user experience in the B2B environment rather than the traditional ERP approach. And that rubs off into other user-friendly features; being able to approve requisitions via email without having to go into the system for instance.” His full analysis can be found here. Subsequently we were able to introduce Peter to Malcolm Preston, Associate Director of Procurement at County Durham & Darlington Foundation Trust. It’s a procurement organisation relatively close to his heart, both as a fellow North-Easterner and as he put it, the place “where all four of my grandparents breathed their last”!
As with most who hear what the team at this Trust has achieved, Peter commented [http://spendmatters.co.uk/nhs-procurement-success-story-durham-part-1/] on the level of adoption and compliance to procurement approaches that “very few private sector firms have managed”, including a working no payment without PO system, 100% electronic procurement transactions, online catalogues with user friendly requisitioning and ordering and a catalogue choice that drives standardisation and demand management. It’s something special to see what they have achieved as a team and with considered technology choices.
A third post by Peter delved deeper into Malcolm Preston’s ongoing belief in the value of data as the crux of bringing procurement in line with organizational goals. This will be absolutely critical in the health service but in any industry in reality. Preston commented [http://spendmatters.co.uk/nhs-procurement-success-story-durham-part-2/] that “if we do move to a more competitive environment in health provision, hospitals are going to need to understand better and then manage how much it really costs for all the different elements of a patient’s treatment; the total pathway cost. Few hospitals can do this now with any accuracy. And a large part of that cost comes from bought-in goods and services. To achieve that understanding, data is king – it enables us to do that costing properly, as well as comparing prices across sites and Trusts, leverage our spend and rationalise suppliers”.
This is all further reinforcement that procurement is fundamentally about people, before prices and process. Technology will only enable the process and the right prices if it embrace the people, whose knowledge and strategy should be represented at the highest level of any organisation.
