Organisational view of the role of the procurement department differs from company to company.
Purchasing and Supply with Nyasha Chizu
Some view it as an operational activity that demands lesser technical competences from staff, but increased oversight by finance and administration function.
Very few regard the activity as strategic with capacity to drive competitiveness, innovation and efficiency in businesses.
The situation is the same at national level where the public procurement board is limited to operational activities without any influence on national strategy at the detriment of national development.
Like in most organisations, the public procurement laws confine the public procurement board to narrowly defined functional role at the expense of them being a strategic contributor. The consequences of doing so are catastrophic, poor public service are rampant.
The painful bit is that there is a lot of buck-passing and finger-pointing with very little being done to arrest the inadequacies. To that effect, some international debates on procurement had a view that truly talented procurement professionals would not last long in that function, they should move out of the procurement function after five–six years and engage into other professions such as finance, human resources, manufacturing or marketing.
Others did not consider that procurement was a profession that demands certain qualifications, skills and issues of whether the department represented an “expansion or an assimilation” role in the organisation were contentious.
- Chamisa under fire over US$120K donation
- Mavhunga puts DeMbare into Chibuku quarterfinals
- Pension funds bet on Cabora Bassa oilfields
- Councils defy govt fire tender directive
Keep Reading
Only a handful of personnel in procurement roles possess the relevant qualifications, to the detriment of efficiency in organisations as a result.
Expansion role acknowledges that purchasing can have a broader role in the organisation’s overall success while still recognising and working within its unique framework.
Assimilation, on the other hand, tends to view procurement as an adjunct of a core practice of finance where there is greater tendency to overlook important attributes that are indigenous to the procurement practice.
The role of the procurement organisation is somehow diluted by failure by the procurement systems to manage the supplier base. Some urge that if there is a choice of more than twenty to hundred thousand suppliers for an organisation, there is continued need to maintain the lower ranked buyers in the organisation due to the abundance of choice.
In that regard, many institutions are comfortable with many lowly-ranked buyers.
However, one school of thought concluded that one strategic procurement thinker with the right skills and capabilities is worth 10 to 12 of your normal, run-of –the-mill procurement staff.
This paradigm thinking certainly marks a new procurement perception.
Preference of procurement professionals with broad understanding of different industries since they understand the business case and the business language is ever increasing.
This class of creative and innovative procurement gurus has the capacity to drive strategy and turnaround programmes since they are viewed as wonderfully connected to the organisation.
It must be note however that departmental resistance has been one of the most common challenges associated with a failed procurement initiative.
The biggest question is how, in Zimbabwe, transformation of procurement can be undertaken to drive competitiveness and efficiency when the procurement professionals’ keys to the process are marginalised?
