11 Skills That Will Make You a Better Procurement Manager

The primary function of a procurement manager is to build and manage a team of procurement professionals that is liable for understanding, forecasting and procuring right goods and services for a company to run its business operations efficiently.

At aahaa, we strongly believe that procurement managers should be proactive rather than being reactive to any situation that they might confront in their daily routine. Since procurement managers have greater responsibilities and challenges ahead, it is imperative to acquire some specialised skills in order to execute procurement requirements diligently.

11 Essential Skills Required For Becoming a Better Procurement Manager

Category Management Skill:

As a procurement manager, you should be a category management expert. You must be able to identify which product belong to which category based up on your company’s procurement needs, and be able to classify your spending on both direct and indirect goods without compromising on quality, time and cost benchmark.

Project Management Skill:

Since procurement manager drives the whole team, it is essential to acquire great project management skills. Your prime role as a project manager is to plan, design, implement and manage each procurement projects successfully. Identify risk mitigation strategy, assigning roles and responsibilities to other team members and meeting project deadlines consistently are of greater importance.

Negotiation Skill:

Procurement managers should always be great buyers, and in order to become a great buyer, you must have an ability to negotiate with your vendor or supplier to carry out great deals. A successful negotiation must result in mutual agreement and interest without creating any conflict for either of the parties.

Learning Skill:

If you desire to be a top notch procurement manager, you need to improve your learning skills, and in fact, you may need to be a life-long learner. You do not need to depend solely on your current skills and knowledge; as they have high tendencies of becoming quickly outdated. You need to adopt learning as your continuous responsibility to become a better and more productive procurement manager in your organization. 

A better approach to this is to review several websites offering related training courses and see if the training can fill the gap for you. Another approach to this is to read journals and books related procurement and the line of business you’re into. You can discuss your intentions with your HR manager and see if you can get some assistance from the organization to foot the bill for your training.

Networking Skill:

Networking is a powerful quality that draws you close to the people, individuals, and organizations that have the knowledge or information you’re seeking for. Networking is a skill that does not come overnight. Make sure you’re organised whenever you seek an opportunity to meet someone new. You can start by asking intelligent questions about them or probably ask the area of their expertise and take the time to listen carefully to hear their response. Keep the information obtained and possibly enter the information into your computer for reference purposes. Once it is saved, you can easily access the details of the person without necessarily wracking your head to remember any detail about the person. 

A very good way of improving on your networking is the use of online networking groups (Example: LinkedIn has many groups that are solely created for procurement professionals). Those groups can be used to build your online links and lastly on networking, do not be afraid to meet people who could be of help to you.

Communication Skill:

If you want to be a productive procurement manager, you need to learn how to get your ideas across efficiently and quickly. To do this, there is a need for a good communication skill. This entails writing; speaking, presentation etc. keep in mind that having a good communication is a two-way process.

It is more important you ensure your audience is able to understand every point of yours rather than passing your information across in a succinct way. To be effective in this, you may need to pay attention to body signs and languages to know if your audience lacks concentration or understanding.

Research:

Another good way of becoming a professional procurement manager is to make several types of research most especially when you have no available information to use. When you need some information for some tasks ahead, the best to do is to do further research. One good method of doing the research is to start by posing questions that start with “how or explain.” Ensure that the people you are asking have the required experience and intelligent to respond to your question credibly. To get the breadth and depth of the analysis needed, it is advisable you do not limit your research to a very few number of people.

Analytical Skills:

As a procurement manager, you must have the skill to grasp data and information available to you, and be able analyse and provide solutions to both minor and complex issues. You may confront an abnormal situation that may act as a bottle-neck during a procurement process. During such circumstances you need to accumulate all the crucial information accessible to you across the organization and investigate to make a proper judgement to remove the obstacles.

Tech Know-how:

Improving technological skills are a must for procurement manager in today’s technological era. With your extensive and profound knowledge on procurement process and function, you should have the skills to make use of IT to build a better procurement solution.

Acquiring and implementing these skills consistently will enable you become capable of executing a procurement manager’s role effectively and efficiently.

What others skills you think is required for becoming a better procurement manager?