The Procurement Academy | Procurement Apprenticeships | CIPS Qualifications | Procurement Training Yorkshire

The colonel is working on it was the humorous response from KFC recently when asked when and how they would resolve the supply issue of chicken as the shortages continue. The issue stems from KFC switching its deliveries from Bidvest Logistics to DHL in a deal struck last year. KFC's problem? - They're huge and the press loves a multimillion monumental screw-up. A similar situation happened at Burger King six years ago, so why aren't we learning? Apparently, the issue is software malfunction and a shortage of staff. Doesn't this remind us of the Olympics when there was a dramatic shortage of security staff, as the customer of G4S wouldn't pay for training and development ahead of schedule, thus…

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What is Category Management? In a nutshell Category Management is the consolidation of different agreements into a single streamline and efficient contract. The Category part is a grouping if items or services available from the same or a similar supplier base. The Management side is to own these areas and ensure the business can monopolise on the best available savings. The benefits to the business. • Expected savings of between 10-30% upon delivery. • Development capability across supply base, especially strategic suppliers. • Shift from a reactive function to a proactive function. • Improvements cross functionally in quality, cost savings, sales forecasts and service levels. • Excellent reputation from customers i.e. on-time delivery. • Reduces risk in the supply chain. • High payback ratio. The Procurement Academy offers a 2-day course in Category Management to bring any…

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If your businesses outflows are far outweighing it's inflows it is easy to opt for cutbacks...and unfortunately one of the first areas to suffer cutbacks is the training budget, this is a crucial mistake and here's why: 1. The right training program will have a plethora of benefits for a company: it increases employee engagement, retention, and productivity; it decreases the need for supervision, reduces absenteeism, improves customer service, and boosts sales. 2. Well-trained employees make less mistakes and, because they feel appreciated the training will increase their loyalty and personal performance. It will improve their own and others perceptions of them. 3. Minimising staff turnaround has to be one of the biggest benefits. If you only have a small training budget utilise this effectively.…

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How can we invest in our existing talent? Investing in our existing talent often requires a cultural change - it can mean altering ingrained attitudes from long-standing members of senior staff. Keeping people in stalemate job situations because they have the monopoly of skills and knowledge to fulfil that role effectively is not acceptable. Having an individual who can fulfil a specific skill is an asset to a manager but keeping them in that role because the prospect of re-training someone to do something which no one else appears to be able to do or want to do - is not the answer. Give that individual a time frame i.e. three months to re-train the prospective candidate and write a…

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The move to succession planning must be one bought in from the CEO and cascaded down at every level. Potential leaders should be identified from junior level up. You will not retain junior procurement professionals who are often initially motivated and energetic, if you constantly recruit externally and pay the new candidate twice as much as the junior team member. This is un loyal and disrespectful. If that procurement member is a valued member of the team, invest in them. Invest in their training and up skill them. Try a performance related pay contract with your existing junior procurement individual. incremental pay increases dependent on key milestones achieved. There is no stronger measure of performance than working with someone full time…

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1) Organise your work space This seems a simple one but many times this is the most essential. Is there enough light? Are you warm enough? Too warm? Are all distractions out of sight? (TV, radio and mobile phone etc?) Your study space is important, make sure everyone knows you have an exam and you need time and space to revise in a suitable area. 2) Explain your answers to others Speaking out loud to friends, family, loved ones and even pets can help cermet the information firmly into your brain. If you can't explain it to them thoroughly then you know there are areas which you need to work on. 3) Take regular breaks Devise a revision schedule giving yourself plenty of breaks.…

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We deliver excellent training by thoroughly understanding the challenges that face Procurement & Supply Chain leaders today. We are forward thinking; constantly updating our knowledge to keep you and your team ahead of the game in the Procurement profession. We regularly engage with CIPS holding our own talks and conferences on current Procurement & Supply Chain issues such as Modern day slavery. We believe that having a versatile structure by incorporating blended learning through adobe captivate by using iPad's allows the tech savvy apprentices to save time, effort and the environment (all notes from tutorials can be saved on the iPad.) All our tutors have a wealth of academic and on-the-job experience: (http://www.theprocurementacademy.com/our-tutors) We have a structured feedback and monitoring system…

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In today's world of procurement with its ever changing and fast paced nature some professionals are been left behind in an identified Skills Gap. The reasons for this skills gap are as follows: 1) Businesses are not aware there is a skill-gap and are not utilising the apprenticeship levy, educational/training budget effectively. This can be There are some key clues in determining if your organisation is failing to see a skills-gap. These are: • There is not an extensive history of training/qualification in the procurement team or even the business. • There is a victim-culture in the procurement team, (it's not my fault, it's the suppliers etc) • There continuous firefighting and seeing beyond the immediate tender and negotiation process doesn't happen. • Seen as primarily…

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