“It’s not just about just ripping cost out for the sake of it, but it’s actually doing it in a more intelligent way that says ‘We’ll create value’.”
It can take a number of months or years to set up a supply chain, but as we’ve all discovered from the past year it takes far less time to stress test it to breaking point. The events of the past year highlight a necessity for any procurement function – supply chain resilience.
With an impressive career in procurement, Managing Director of Barkers Commercial Consultancy, David Loseby joins us to discuss the effects of single-source supply chains on resilience, and the need for modern procurement professionals to be as proficient in soft skills as they are in technical ability.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- Reinforcing supply chain resilience in various categories
- The pros and cons of a single-source supply chain
- A growing emphasis on the value of soft skills
- The need for modern procurement professionals to be flexible
- Balancing theoretical and practical procurement, and being a “Pracademic”
This episode of Talent Talks is sponsored by Suppleye – a free to access platform that provides fresh insights, breaking news and unique sentiment scores on the companies that interest you. Know your suppliers inside and out by visiting https://www.suppleye.com/ and signing up in less than 2 minutes.
Links & references
- David Loseby, Managing Director at Barkers Commercial Consultancy
- Barkers Commercial Consultancy
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive
Episode highlights
“If something happens, as we have seen with a pandemic, you don’t get a huge amount of notice. It happens very, very quickly, and therefore your ability to be able to respond and have a supply chain that will work is put at risk.” – 3:50 – David Loseby
“The important thing to recognise is that the collaboration, the response and the action plans were all constructed for different suppliers with different sectors and different geographies. You can’t say ‘Here’s the blueprint, just go do that’, it wasn’t a one size fits all.” – 9:23 – David Loseby
“The worrying factor for me is that, because of cost pressures and the need, particularly for manufacturing businesses to see economies of scale, I think there are many sectors and companies that are almost – I’ll say it’s because of the absolute obsession around cost – being forced to make a lot more decisions around single source.” – 11:55 – David Loseby
“When you start to look at the soft skills, it’s all in the social sciences. So if we’re not recruiting people from the social science backgrounds, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that suddenly that’s an issue for the profession.” – 15:20 – David Loseby
“I think what we’re starting to see is almost a layering of different skills and attributes that people need to operate in different businesses, different sectors and different categories.” – 23:55 – David Loseby
“I would say there are a number of things that I’ve seen as being quite pivotal in my career, like taking the opportunity to live and work overseas doing a role that’s really outside of your comfort zone.” – 33:00 – David Loseby
“I think procurement is actually a bit of a crossroads, and the reason I say that is that there’s a much clearer division between strategic and operational procurement. Not that there’s anything wrong with one or the other, because there are specific skills for either part of that equation.” – 36:20 – David Loseby
“It’s not just about just ripping cost out for the sake of it, but it’s actually doing it in a more intelligent way that says ‘We’ll create value’. And oddly enough, through creating that value, you get the adoption of the solution that you put in place while it’s imposed upon the business, because it’s cheap.” – 38:35 – David Loseby
