7 Insights into how CFOs See Procurement

How do CFOs perceive the procurement function? Is there a beautiful connection, or do relations continue to be prickly? And why do we continue to talk about this topic like it really, really matters?

Because it really... really matters.

At sharedserviceslink.com we insist on talking about the relations between procurement and finance for many reasons, but let's start with the following:

• It's not natural for finance and procurement to gel - they are functions that attract different types of people


• Therefore we as a business community for shared services feel duty-bound to share best practices on how to connect the two functions elegantly


• And alignment is so important as it has a massive effect on purchase to pay, and in turn the performance of the wider business


• But the nuts and bolts of creating this lovely, warm alignment are sometimes overlooked or not known to either party

Which is why we spend good time communicating to our 7000 members and beyond how to build the collaboration.

Which is why on the 26th April 2012 we hosted the webinar 'CFO insight: the dividends of collaboration between finance and procurement' sponsored by Ariba and co-presented by Sam Knox from CFO Magazine. The magazine runs a research report every five years, and the webinar drew on the key findings and trends.

Here are some of the key insights from the 263 CFOs interviewed:

1. 26% believed procurement's performance has improved over the past 5 years vs 15% in 2007. This is an improvement!


2. 73% believed procurement has become more strategically minded.


3. 73% said there is a great opportunity for procurement to increase its contribution by finding new savings


4. 64% said procurement could increase its contribution by improving relationsships with suppliers


5. 48% said procurement needs improvement in supporting risk analysis


6. 42% said procurement needs improvement in providing information and analysis


7. 44% said they strongly agreed or agreed that procurement frequently develop good ideas for improving business performance

The final assessment? Based on the perception of CFOs, there have been improvements but it looks like we are at the beginning of an exciting journey where impressive results will be realised from this tighter collaboration.