How work organization influences its effectiveness?
Administrative issues may happen in every team. They may be both organizational things, formalities, paper work and communication or limited human and technical resources.
70% of CPOs who are working with NextBuy team claim that team effectiveness decreases radically due to administrative and operational issues. One of the main procurement challenges is simplifying buyers’ operational work. The thing is that it’s not an easy task as the processes in procurement teams are really complex, the number of the tasks is high and the buyers need to communicate with many parties in many cases. We have consulted some procurement leaders working with NextBuy team and managed to create 3 key rules which you need to follow to manage an organizational chaos.
TALK
This is what we talk about in almost each article and it seems that this is the basic for each organizational unit or structure. Without communication, the chaos will appear immediately. In case of procurement teams we are talking about multi – layer communication: with suppliers, business, external partners, but also within the team. The team works for a joint business objective thus the most important is that buyers’ work is as agile and well-organized as any unexpected changes couldn’t break its stability.
CATEGORIZE
Double files, templates and mess in folders. This is how the reality looks like. It’s good to categorize the things which may be categorized (such as types of contracts) to have easy access to them later on and use already prepared resources.
ADAPT
Not the reality to the processes, but the process to the reality. Use the available technology in a way that it helps already existing processes and make them easier. Not vice versa.
NextBuy, following those steps, has introduced next changes in the system. This time we focused on operational work and now the system simplifies buyers’ work even better, so they can focus on the strategic work.
1. Substitutions. The absence of some team members is not a problem any more. The substitution function available in the system allows to plan the absence and appoint the team members who are going to continue the purchasing processes.
2. Adding the product prices depending on the number of the ordered items.
3. Various types of contracts. We have now the ability to define the type of contract, for example, NDA, appendix, framework contract. The types are configured according to the company needs.
