Procurement has become an increasingly important function in a wide range of industries and business sectors.
It is seen as a strategic function, a function that touches and influences all aspects of a business’s operation. Procurement should facilitate, enable and empower but procurement is also often misunderstood and can lead to confrontation.
The language of procurement can be peppered with strange acronyms and it can be hard for people to hear past a wall of words studded with, “You have to…”, “We must…” and “You can’t…”.
And yet procurement is all about building relationships, relationships with suppliers as well as with departments and individuals within your own company.
NLP training can give Supply chain leaders and procurement managers the tools, skills and knowledge to use richer communication that will forge stronger relationships and add value to the process.
One example of just how effective this can be is Andy, Chief Procurement Officer at a large NHS Trust. He is responsible for a team of over 30 people who spend more than £150 million per year. Not long after he joined the Trust he was involved in a major project to enhance endoscopic surgery. This was the biggest project of its kind in Europe and his customer was a “prickly and vocal” Consultant Surgeon.
In fact, at the start of the project he was forwarded an email from this Consultant that simply said, “This is War!”, a rather forthright way of summing up the classic tension of two opposing philosophies familiar to many procurement professionals – the desire to spend and the need to save.
Choosing communication rather than confrontation, Andy used the skills he had gathered on one of our NLP Business Practioner courses to steer the project to a successful conclusion and at the end of that journey the same Consultant sent the following email to 150 NHS leaders:
Dear All
Re: Laparoscopic stacks – skills training
See enclosed photo – the new HD stack systems in the skills training room in the Radiology Academy – result!
Many thanks to all being involved in this initiative to bring us out of the dark ages (literally!).
The stacks for the rest of the hospital to follow shortly.
A special thanks to Andy XXX, whose god-like skills in the laparoscopic stack tender have saved the Trust ~£600k
Andy and his team continue to add value and save costs for the NHS. For example, they recently made a saving of £1million on a £3 million annual spend through collaborative working with various teams within the Trust.
The Consultant Surgeon now champions procurement within the Trust and leads a commercial team in addition to his work in theatre.
At Evolution we have a particular understanding of how NLP can benefit procurement practitioners and we have delivered training courses on that to a wide range of industry sectors particularly in manufacturing and engineering.
If, like us, you see the benefits of building better relationships using clearer communication, then please get in touch and we can discuss your specific needs.