What type of procurement persona are you?
Research has revealed that there are four types of procurement innovator.
The four procurement personas are:
- high-level visionaries
- enlightened activists
- early strategists
- pragmatic professionals
These four personas have been developed based on research with 100 senior UK procurement executives, which shows that at least 80 percent of procurement professionals are seeking to challenge the status quo through innovation, but less than one in five are innovation visionaries and many are taking different paths to reach their innovation potential.
The research revealed that 18 percent of respondents considered themselves ‘high-level visionaries’, committed to technology and using data insights to influence business innovation; 36 percent are ‘enlightened activists’, successfully driving change and delivering business value through high technology adoption; 30 percent are ‘early strategists’, still sowing the early seeds of procurement innovation with many opportunities ahead of them; 20 percent are ‘pragmatic professionals’, less innovation focused but still open to using it to improve procurement practice.
If you would like to find out what type of procurement persona you have then there is a simple quiz here: What type of procurement innovator are you?
Daniel Ball, Director at Wax Digital commented on the findings: “What’s really positive about these findings is that almost all procurement professionals see value in innovation and are involved in it, whether that’s changing the way they do things in their department, or as is increasingly the case, influencing how the business as a whole should adapt too.
“While early innovators tend to be dealing with more fundamental changes, such as implementing technology for the first time, they have the biggest ambitions for innovation in the near future. At the more experienced end of the spectrum we see a mix of procurement working hands on to drive business innovation and senior procurement advisors consulting on the business big questions around future change.
“And these findings ring true with what we see working with procurement teams on a day to day basis. The function is shedding its stuffy and administrative reputation, investing in technology that integrates the whole sourcing and purchasing process delivering valuable insight, enabling them to be bolder in showing the business what it’s capable of.”
The personas are based on research conducted by MORAR Consulting with 100 senior UK procurement executives in spring 2016, commissioned by Wax Digital.
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