658: The Good News and Bad News About Procurement Influence Today w/ Dan French

“I think it is really important not to assume that just trying to tie everything to revenue is the right answer … I think we should tie everything to the value and the outcomes perceived by our stakeholders.” - Dan French, CEO at Consider Solutions

Procurement has long struggled with feeling as though they are an underappreciated or undervalued function that receives less support, advocacy, and budget than other areas of the business – especially revenue-driving areas, like sales or marketing. 

As Dan French, CEO at Consider Solutions, said in the opening session of Mastermind LIVE 2023, not only is this perception a little misguided (and likely not doing procurement any favors either), but it also can lead to an over-reliance on revenue contribution as procurement’s key performance metric. 

Instead, he says, procurement has to understand that their existential angst is not unique. Every business unit is fighting for relevance (and resources) and delivering real value requires procurement to look at more than just cost savings and create a more “balanced scorecard” of what success looks like.

In this episode, Dan talks with Philip Ideson about:

• How to build a balanced performance measurement framework that reflects procurement’s real value contribution
• The importance of aligning with the business versus going rogue when it comes to goals and KPIs
• What procurement keeps getting wrong about their own role in the business

Links:

• Dan French on LinkedIn
• Mastermind LIVE 2023 on Demand
• Subscribe to This Week in Procurement