STATE OF FLUX
2014 GLOBAL SRM RESEARCH REPORT
ARTicle 141
Aligns learning and development to structured role definition and performance criteria.
SRM COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK
SRM TALENT ASSESSMENT
Provides a clear progression from contract to value creation to build ‘customer of choice’ benefits.
SRM COMPETENCY FRAMEWORK
PERFORMANCE MANAGING STRATEGIC SUPPLIERS
JOINT STRATEGIC ACCOUNT PLANNING
SUPPLIER (AND STAKEHOLDER) ENGAGEMENT SKILLS
STIMULATING AND MANAGING SUPPLIER INNOVATION
Ensures everyone understands the investment in SRM.
OPERATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS
TECHNOLOGY / PLATFORM
Establishes sound governance and supplier management operations.
CONCLUSION: THE TALENT DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP
We see the supplier relationship manager as truly multi-disciplined – business coach, cross- functional team leader, master influencer, and communicator and innovation champion. Learning and development has an important role to play in developing the role. It is imperative to recognise the importance of context when defining training. Many organisations have excellent internal training programmes on subjects such as leadership, negotiating, influencing skills, and so on. The issue we often see, however, is that these programmes are generic – i.e. not delivered in a format specific to the SRM context. Influencing, trust building and communication skills, for example, should all be addressed in the context of the day job – using realistic day-in-the-life scenarios to make training relevant, meaningful and immediately transferable to a live supplier relationship. Our talent roadmap, therefore, covers four important success factors to drive sustainable organisational success: An SRMfoundation for everyone – By everyone we mean everyone who comes into contact with a strategic supplier relationship. It’s important that everyone who works with the suppliers either directly or indirectly understands the investment being made in SRM, and can play their part in creating a customer of choice environment. An outcome-focused development plan for supplier relationship managers – This should represent accumulative build from risk, contract
and performance management skills, and go on to focus on joint account planning, programme management of value release and delivery of behavioural skills in context (the stakeholder management, cross functional leadership, strategic execution and communications skills already mentioned). This progressive path to achieving customer of choice should also include the important discipline of stimulating and managing supplier innovation. Building on a sound governance structure – Ensuring the operational effectiveness of SRM is in place means addressing segmentation and governance process and, where appropriate, using enabling technology (such as supplier portals) to ensure supplier managers (and suppliers) can work smarter rather than harder. Underpin the SRM function with a competency framework – As we have seen, the competency framework underpins many aspects of the people and skills agenda to provide a reference point for job definition, hiring, training and performance management. The people and skills pillar is like the tip of an iceberg – Beneath the surface is a pluralistic set of drivers and success factors that need to be considered in order to drive sustainable talent improvements. To ignore these is to relegate training programmes to a ‘flavour of the month’ initiative where there is a very real risk that, over the longer term, nothing will have changed and the spend might as well have been avoided.
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