For us procurement folk, there is often a major misunderstanding around what a Category strategy stands for.
Over the course of thousands of category strategy developments we hear often; “Short term we need to e.g. perform some sourcing, resolve supply chain disruptions, sort out our quality issues. What do we need a strategy for – isn’t that something more mid or long-term?!”
This attitude has resulted in an underestimation of the importance of a category strategy, or any other strategy to resolve burning issues in the most efficient way possible.
A category strategy is determined through two key insights:
1) What are the top external or internal challenges in a category?
2) What are the top business requirements we need to address in a category?
Some “bad habits” in procurement, for example, insufficient expectations on procurement (focus on cost reductions), mismatch in competencies (sourcing & fire fighting), and failing to address senior procurement stakeholders – led to permanent frustration. For decades procurement is struggling to acquire that “seat at that table”.
Once your organization can mobilize stakeholders with the right storytelling, identify priorities, and understand true challenges and business requirements (fueled with the appropriate analysis and market intelligence), you will be able to intelligently address short-term issues.
This is why Cirtuo finds strategic work in procurement so exciting.
Turn strategic thinking into a routine
Cirtuo Guided Strategy Creation™ enables organizations like yours to develop a fresh perspective on all key categories and capture available savings while keeping an eye on every possible risk. This is precisely what our solution delivers – Cirtuo helps you get to the heart of strategic procurement. Everything you need for analyzing your categories is here: Spend Analysis, Stakeholder Mapping, Cost Drivers, Risk Management, Kraljic Matrix, Five Forces and that’s just to name a few. After you’ve skimmed all the data from categories, employ a strategy with our very own Strategic Framework for Categories and discover your winning levers.
To know your categories is to know your business.
How well do you know them?
