Knowing what success truly is, and being able to demonstrate it is really important. It goes to strategic alignment and meaningful performance metrics. This is career insurance for you and your people, showing they continue to deliver the value that is important to the business. Do not be shy of refreshing these with every strategic plan. You must be able to map what you do to key strategic initiatives. Do it, and make sure everybody understands it. What procurement brings to the table is getting the user what they require, and making the rules, risks, and policies transparent to the user. Sometimes, this also bring benefits in the form of savings and other forms of ownership benefits, so tracking them will buttress your credibility with management and open doors to work with other stakeholders.

However you expect to show your success, you must have a concise set of key performance indicators that track progress against your objectives. While the ROSMA initiative offers an interesting starting point, I believe your perspective must cover how well you are serving your stakeholders, how well you are integrating suppliers’ capabilities, and what is your contribution in value, efficiency, effectiveness and risk management.

A major challenge with procurement is that once the deal is signed, many organizations fail to manage the supplier’s performance the way they would manage an employee’s performance. While many have a formal Contract Management discipline in place, but far too many still “throw the contract over the wall” for the user to manage, while many of them have no training in contract law and are not able to read a contract. More enlightened organizations are implementing Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) to make sure the right deal with the right supplier actually delivers the promised benefits. This also sets the stage for better ongoing business outcomes with the long term suppliers that have strategic value. SRM does not have an obvious place in the organization, so procurement can provide an effective and legitimate place to house what is becoming an increasingly important function.