Procurement team ----a stakeholder on fence.

Mohan Kulkarni PM Specialist| MBK Consultants Pune, Maharashtra State. India, India

IN most organisations procurement teams are not reporting to Project Manager or Program Manager for many obvious reasons but as a consequence it is experience of many that they act as stakeholder seating on fence.
For their own reasons and KPIs they are keen and aggresive in settling contractors or suppliers who offers the lowest price. On the face it is seen that procurement management process is followed .
In such a case should the Procurement head be a fence sitter or part of the failure also.
Mohan

Posted: Jun 1, 2020 1:15 PM

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Tarun Nair Adoor, Kerala, India

Jun 02, 2020 10:26 AM

Replying to Mohan Kulkarni

...

Dear Tarun
Good that you have also experienced these gaps.( in indian context)
The task of bridging the gaps is a skill of a project manager upto a point but beyond that if the organisation is not yet tuned and groomed to a required level of foreseeing the complete cost picture including the cost of poor delivery by the supplier and if the life cycle cost concept is not yet assimilated by procurement team then there is big problem for project manager for successful delivery in spite all the systematic efforts at his end.
I agree with all of you it is an art to win the procurement team and pull on your side for successful but there can be organisational limitaions wher there is absence of professional management.
Thanks once again
Regads
Mohan

I had one experience with procurement team working from europe as well. It is common as mostly the procurement people deals with multiple projects and everyone goes to them with high priority, so it becomes difficult for them where to give priority until they are very much connected to project. If they are involved they will also support for possible process tweaks to ensure project is on time.
I had some very good experience as well, in parallel to few bad ones.

Posted: Jun 3, 2020 9:51 AM

Peter Rapin Subject Matter Expect; Project Delivery| Independent Consultant Ontario, Canada

As a project manager you have to watch and react to stakeholders operating in silos. It's not just procurement. It is doubly important when specific stakeholders have KPIs not related to the project, their objectives may not be fully integrated with the project. You see this a lot with government organizations and large bureaucratic corporations.

How can you make it work?
1) get to understand stakeholder constraints and performance criteria
2) make sure they understand the project objectives and priorities
3) get them involved in the development of the Project Plan, making sure you incorporate their needs and get specific commitments.
4) treat them as an asset not as an inconvenience, do not avoid them
5) find ways to make them part of the project successes (and failures).
6) establish the point of contact and have a resolution ladder to deal with problems or perceived problems

Posted: Jun 3, 2020 3:43 PM

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Procurement team ----a stakeholder on fence.

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