I recently guested on a Podcast with the change gurus Ian Kingstone and Jonathan Parnaby over at Beer and Butterfly (due to air on 16th June – more to follow on this) and we had a lively and lengthy discussion about Procurement’s role in supporting change.
On the back of the conversation, I wanted to share just a few key learnings ahead of the Podcast going live:
1. Bringing Procurement in at the start of the process will add the most value:
- You can discuss and agree the supplier strategy and approach up front rather than trying to retro-fit it afterwards
- It will ensure activities are planned in parallel around the rest of the process so won’t add extra time
- Key commercial risks and learnings from similar programmes can be identified and mitigated up front
2. Considering Change Management as part of the negotiation cycle will ensure an appropriate and efficient process is agreed and documented within the contract.
- This is as much about pragmatism around small change as it is about governance around big Change.
3. Breaking supplier delivery down into manageable chunks is best.
- It avoids unnecessary change activity
- It brings the agility that modern transformation programmes need
- It mitigates the risk of committing too far ahead in large programmes
This will need Procurement support to ensure all the commercial terms are nailed down in the framework agreement, but will leave the transformation team free to get on with delivering value, not spending endless time on the change process itself.
Does this resonate with your experience of managing change with suppliers? If you think we can help, we’re all ears, so please get in touch.
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