Dive Brief:
- Amid changing technology and evolving roles, procurement leaders showed a sharp lack of confidence in their future talent pipeline, according to a recent Gartner survey.
- Of procurement leaders surveyed, only 14% expect to have the talent needed to meet the future performance requirements of the procurement function at their organization.
- That contrasted with current needs, where procurement leaders were generally confident that they had adequate talent for the procurement role. Specifically, 46% agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that their procurement talent levels were currently adequate, while only 7% disagreed.
Dive Insight:
Gartner pointed to a “bifurcation” between current and future needs — and the talent pools to navigate them — that procurement as a profession will need to address.
“Procurement leaders are aware that the competencies required to drive transformation are different from traditional procurement skills, and that there are significant gaps between their current and future needs for the most important competencies,” Fareen Mehrzai, a senior director analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain Practice, said in a company post about the results.
One divergence is in the growing need for both new and generalized skills. In the survey of 111 procurement leaders, 69% said business acumen had gained importance in the last 12 months. Another 68% said technology and data skills had gained in importance. But only 26% said “traditional procurement competencies” had gained importance in the same period.
Gartner suggested more planning work needs to be done equipping staff with knowledge that they need. Only 31% believe that their current competency models are relevant to their staff’s work, even though a large majority had dedicated strategies at their organizations targeting “the most critical competencies.”
Other surveys of the profession this year have highlighted the changing nature of procurement as their organizational missions and directives change, often to take on more responsibilities.
A 2023 Deloitte survey of procurement leaders found that top priorities today include operational efficiency, ESG and corporate responsibility, digital transformation and cost reductions. ESG was among the topics that had increased in importance, rising by four percentage points since 2021 and becoming the second most-cited priority behind operational efficiency.
The procurement role is also rapidly shifting in response to new technologies and digitization. In a survey of procurement decision makers recently released by Amazon, 98% of respondents said they are planning investments in AI, analytics and insights tools, and automation for their procurement operations in the next few years.
