Opinion: Big ideas are not enough

Great strategy is essential, but it’s worthless unless accompanied by effective action and attention to detail.

Just before I left my last company, I hosted our annual procurement strategy planning workshop. It was the fifth time that we had run such a session and the event was an opportunity for the category managers to present their strategies for the forthcoming year and have them interrogated and challenged by their peers and customers before moving into our prioritisation and resource allocation process.

I watched the two days of presentations with immense satisfaction. Our plans were more complete and aligned with the business needs than had been evident previously and there were more customers in attendance. The workshop was undoubtedly worthwhile. But it got me thinking. Seminars are full of the need for the strategic approach. I have worked in and around strategic procurement for more than a decade and what I saw at the sessions represented the pinnacle of anything I had experienced before.

But strategy on its own is insufficient. Too often such plans are no more than PowerPoint aspirations, presented with the best intent, but whose full benefits are never achieved. A strategy is worth nothing without people willing to understand the data and get involved in the daily detail. As a profession we interview and evaluate people on their strategic strengths, when the real differentiators are those with the aptitude to get on and do it.

A headhunter once called me and said they were looking for a head of procurement who would feel genuine pain every time a penny left the organisation’s door. I knew what she meant. But how many of our category managers really act like it’s their own money?

How should they act? When we revamped and reintroduced our hotel policy (effectively reducing the level of hotel accommodation we used) we wanted to ensure high compliance. Every month we got a list of people who were not staying at preferred hotels. The next step most companies take is to send a standard email to the defaulter’s manager, who in the over-emailed world we live in, probably never raises it with the individual. We went one step further. We phoned the non-compliers up, not to tell them off but to let them know that the corporate executive team wanted a list of all the non-compliers each month and that they would be on it next time. We never got a repeat offender and we got compliance up to 96 per cent. On relating this tale to a colleague he didn’t think our actions were direct enough. He felt we should be informed of non-compliers the night they checked in, and then suggested we send a compliance squad to knock on their hotel doors at two in the morning to ask why they were staying in a non-compliant hotel! He was joking (I think) but I got the point.

Take another example. Our secretary got prices for various air journeys from our travel agent, and then set about booking the same trips on the internet as an independent traveller. When this revealed that she could book three of the trips significantly cheaper herself, we took that information back to the travel agency and asked them to explain why.

So how about this for a plan. Send your category managers out to local print shops to check out the price of print on the high street, or the price of stationery at WH Smith. Send them to your local branches, offices or factories to see how many deliveries they get and how it disrupts their day. Or what staff actually do with the packaging that is meant to be returned. By doing this you will keep a much stronger grip on the day-to-day realities of the cost in your company.

Of course you should seek and value the great strategic thinker, who can represent his ideas well when up on his feet, and is able to sell them into your organisation. But assess him more on what he actually does, his grasp of the detail, and the actions he takes as a result of the knowledge of what is going on. It is that which will make a real difference to your organisation, not some PowerPoint presentation slides slowly gathering electronic dust on a shared directory somewhere.

Guy Allen is director, procurement and supply, at Fujitsu Services