Procurement Leaders Forum 2011

Building competitive supply chains - The CPO's role

As competition is increasingly taking place between supply chains rather than just individual companies, it is crucial that CPOs position themselves to address this challenge or be left behind. However, the risk is that by striving to be competitive in the procurement world might only focus on squeezing supplier margins rather than building strong supply chains.

So the key question remains – how to design and operate an efficient and ultimately competitive supply chain through the effective use of the CPO’s toolkit? And what should such a toolkit include?

For example, innovation can be an elusive, but often invaluable, weapon for improving competitiveness and delivering value to internal customers. Meanwhile, by improving supply chain alignment, operating cost, customer retention and social responsibility CPOs can further optimise their contribution to the overall company value. From a broader perspective, the most competitive companies are frequently those that have lined up a series of best-in-class business partners that they work with to improve the quality and reliability of the end product or service and make an impact on the bottom line. In other words, this is a battle of value chains and CPOs need to get smart.

The Procurement Leaders Forum will bring together the most forward-thinking global procurement executives who will share their experiences, benchmark and exchange their views on this key topic. You and your team will have the opportunity to learn how to extract greater savings and deliver that crucial competitive edge to the business.