Procurement Training

One thing we often come across is businesses looking for training for Procurement staff – clearly there are some good organisations out there that provide professional development (www.cips.org). However for smaller organisations the costs of putting staff through professional courses can sometimes seem a little daunting (often they resort to buying in this knowledge by stating specific educational qualifications on job vacancies).

However for many organisations they won’t want everyone trained up to this level – but will expect some procurement training focussing on specific areas to improve staff competency.

Commonly Procurement Training focuses on a combination of practical training and more formal (often longer term) developmental.

CIPS have developed a purchasers toolkit which covers the following attributes:

• Purchasing
• Negotiation
• Relationship Management
• Influencing Skills
• Legal
• Contract Management
• Stores Management

For many this represents an ideal mix of what procurement staff need to know – many will wish to tailor this mix according to needs. Often as not its’ the Negotiation and Legal/Contract Management that tends to be the weak points in many organisations. What about your company – how do they train staff?