Is rebranding the solution to all Procurement’s problems?
I recently saw a couple of articles discussing the need to (or not to) rebrand Procurement. Two of them being related to the Big Ideas Summit 2016 organized by Procurious. I thought about it and, although I agree with the points of the “pro” articles that describe the shortcomings of many Procurement organizations, I disagree with the need to rebrand the function to call it something else.
I believe that rebranding Procurement would be comparable to applying a fresh coat of paint on a wall to hide cracks. At some point, if nothing is done to fix the cracks, they will show again!
But, let’s explore both points of view.
The devil’s advocate or why the word “Procurement” is cursed.
The two articles I read and that are advocating for a rebranding come from the solution provider Coupa.
- Procurement needs more positivity in an online world published on Procurious by Tyler Chamberlain, Director of Spend Management
- How can Procurement use technology to avoid extinction published on Coupa’s blog based on a webinar by Jason Busch, founder of Spend Matters, and Duncan Jones of Forrester
Both pieces go to great lengths to describe some of the issues and challenges that many Procurement organizations face and they are right on the need for Procurement to change and to do so urgently to avoid extinction.
Hey, I could not disagree with the parallel between Procurement and dinosaurs! See (btw, it was out before Coupa’s post and it’s not the first time that that comparison was done):
Neither could I disagree on the need and urgency for Procurement to evolve:
Even Dilbert said it:
I cannot either disagree with the need for Procurement to be better at leveraging and utilizing technology:
But I disagree with the fact that Procurement needs a rebranding as directly suggested in one of the articles:
“I think a name change signals a change in the attitudes and the goals of the organization,” he said. “I don’t think it matters exactly whether you call it resource management or supplier management or just Fred Bloggs. The fact that you’ve changed the name and publicized new goals and worked out some new KPIs, that’s what’s most significant, I think, for showing that you’re not dinosaurs.” — Duncan Jones of Forrester
The Procurement profession does not need to change name!
Rebranding could endanger Procurement’s credibility even more…
Just changing the name without addressing the root causes that explain the perception that Procurement may have is, as Tanya Seary from Procurious puts it, a distraction.
And it could even be more damaging than being just a distraction. Procurement’s credibility is already fragile.
Just changing the name of Procurement without a more profound change could kill it as some have learned it the hard way:
“The Shack goes down in history as not only one of the tackiest attempts to "hip" up a bland brand image but also did nothing to help RadioShack’s slow decline into obscurity, which eventually culminated (…) with the brand completely shutting down” — 5 epic rebranding fails
Procurement’s purpose did not change, why change its name?
Procurement, as a function, exists to deliver value to the rest of the organization by tapping the supply market. And this has not changed as illustrated by this quote of Peter Kraljic taken from the book Procurement at a crossroads:
The job has not changed; it has been poorly executed! Or more precisely it has not evolved enough by comparison to the rest of the world and economy:
So, the “problem” is not about the “why” but more the “how” and the “what.”
Some activities need to be rebranded.
What Procurement does and how it does it has changed and will continue to change. So, like the skill-set required to be a Procurement officer, the names of some activities have to evolve to reflect such evolutions.
An example of that is SRM.
In his article, SRM is dead long live ROR, Alex Short from Vizibl makes the case for a rebranding of this key Procurement activity to reflect the evolution towards 2-way collaboration.
I also proposed a new name for SRM, SRM2, to reflect a change of perspective:
Another area that may require a change of name is spend management as it conveys an outdated view of Procurement activities and deliverables. Spend management is about spending, in other words, expenses. How to see Procurement as a function adding value when one of its core activity / process is described as spending money. An immediate rebranding of spend management is “value management”!
