Procurement reporting that drives results

Do you know if your procurement reporting is actually driving any business decisions? How do you make sure your decentralised procurement function delivers the required results?

It’s time to move from reporting for reporting’s sake to meaningful insights! The solution isn’t as complex as you think.

The Situation

A NSW State Government client is on a journey to implement a new Enterprise Resource System (ERP). While the new system will enhance the availability and validity of data, our client understands that just reporting on nice-to-know statistics, such as the number of purchase orders raised and the number of suppliers used, doesn’t help much. A new approach to procurement reporting should shift the focus to enforce better procurement practices and change behaviour throughout the organisation.

The sheer volume and complexity of data, the divergent views from multiple stakeholders on what should be reported and a general lack of trust in what has been reported in the past left our client perplexed.

Where to start in order to produce reports that are relevant and reflect all requirements?

There was also a resounding mantra ‘if not broken why fix it?’ as stakeholders were skeptical of the value created through procurement reporting.

Our client sought to revolutionise the contemptuous attitudes about procurement across the organisation and demonstrate the value created through effective procurement and contract management. The Procurement Branch wanted to produce streamlined reports that were relevant, increased visibility of performance across the organisation, identified opportunities as well as compliance risks. Most of all, the new reports should be fit for purpose to inform business decision making.

Our approach

We worked with our client to identify the goals of the procurement function and crucial reporting requirements through consulting with key stakeholders.

In order to cultivate the necessary cultural change, we determined that the current input reporting would be transformed to outcome reporting, changing the focus from “are we doing our job?” to “are we doing a good job?”

During this process all stakeholders refined their understanding of outcomes that were important to the procurement function’s success. It became clear how tracking and reporting on progress reinforces the required outcomes.

Business stakeholders were empowered by the consultation process and the opportunity to contribute, validate findings and provide feedback. By increasing the visibility of data, altering reporting to become outcomes focused and providing positive reinforcement, our client was able to effectively achieve the buy-in from business stakeholders so critical to the attainment of their objectives.

Outcomes and benefit realisation

Grosvenor was able to design three streamlined reports that enable our client to track procurement outcomes across the organisation. The reports are user-friendly, transparent, validated by business units and provide the whole organisation with information that is relevant, reflects all requirements and informs business decision making.

Our client is armed with the capability to elicit the desired outcomes from the procurement function and engender positive change across the organisation.

Learn more about what we do.