Chief Sourcing Officer - momentum is building

September 12th, 2007 at 09:12am David Bush - Iasta

Recently, Supply and Demand Chain Exec ran an article from the executive perspective, which had some interesting insights from Linda Tuck Chapman and Cyndi Joiner of Fifth Third Bank and Sourcing Interests Group, respectively.

Stated early is a profile of the modern CSO, “In more progressive organizations, in addition to reducing costs the CSO is charting a new course to dramatically improve operational performance, establish alliances to open new sales channels and markets, source partners to jointly launch new products, and upgrade the operational performance of business operations. The new value proposition includes establishing clear expectations complemented by performance metrics that are designed to improve company performance. Internally, the CSO will streamline the company’s internal supply chain processes and proactively manage the demand for goods and services.”

The authors also identify four major areas of influence by the CSO, which include performance management, governance, offshoring and outsourcing. All of which are consistently mentioned as trademarks of highly effective sourcing organizations.

In my experience, which is unscientific in nature, I still believe this is a fairly uncommon style of management and organization. More commonly companies are still taking much less sophisticated approaches to supply management and do not give procurement enough resources or value within the overall corporations, leaving purchasing teams without the necessary tools and staff to execute to the fullest ability. Although the CSO position would not be considered a statistical outlier by me, it is certainly under utilized. Fortunately, I believe this position acknowledgement is growing and has changed significantly over the last 8 years that I have witnessed first hand.

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Entry Filed under: General, Supply Management Best Practices