Improvise Supply Base — The next big thing in Middle East Procurement

The CIPS Middle East Conference 2015 ushered in a new wave of ideas in the Procurement Landscape. Held on the 11thof May at the InterContinental Hotel in Abu Dhabi; Procurement Executives in the Middle East gained first hand insights from renowned thought leaders in the region.

Improvise Supply Base

While the discussions circled around tackling common challenges, taking advantage of opportunities & carving the future; the discussion that caught everyone’s attention was — How to multiply your existing Supply Base?

Let’s have a look at the key takeaways:

• Convince stakeholders to spend more with local suppliers for long-term benefits — “Sometimes you need to pay little extra in the short term to develop the supply chain market in the long term locally.” added Jason Brown, Head of Procurement at NBAD (National Bank of Abu Dhabi) He additionally added that you might get a pull back from your budgets team but you need to make them understand the value this step will provide in future.
• Get local Suppliers on board — “Always strive on getting local suppliers on board, if that is not possible at least get Emirati people“quotes Waleed Al Saeedi, Director of Procurement services at Abu Dhabi Tourism and Culture Authority. This step leverages a level of comfortability between your organization & the local market whilst improving the local supplier base with opportunities, impacting economy positively & raising jobs.
• Dedicated team to work on Supplier Development — Having a dedicated team working on Supplier development is a really good starting point for supplier relations. “Qatar Foundation has a dedicated section from their business support department focused specifically on Supplier Relationship Management” quotes Moustafa Helmy, Head of Procurement at Qatar Foundation. The team takes care of all the steps in supplier interaction starting from supplier evaluation, registration & renewal to their complaints, access to the system & everything else.
• Build Scorecards Around Business Goals — Scorecards aligned with business objectives are the apt way to identify gaps which are present in mapping supplier performance. We can jot down each and every KPI we expect from a particular supplier along with the minimum score he needs to achieve on it. It will accurately map performance of each and every supplier and you may also rank them on those basis. It is a bit time consuming and requires more resources but is very beneficial in the long run.

Stay tuned for our next post which will include some more intriguing insights about procurement & supply chain industry in Middle East.