An Unlikely Leadership Book

After reading an article about how a school district applied principles from a business book to turn around its disciplinary problems, I decided to pick up the book "Whale Done: The Power of Positive Relationships."

At its core, the book's message is that principles applied to training whales for Sea World shows can be applied by a manager in a business setting to get better results out of employees. And, actually, I personally think that it had even more applicability to me as a parent of young children.

It is a very quick read. I finished it in a few short reading sessions. So if you want a little bit of leadership inspiration - and a reminder that being a hard-nosed dog sled driver isn't always the best way to positively influence employees - and you don't have much time to devote to reading, I would recommend checking it out.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Get Better Results From Your Staff?
Download The Purchasing Leader's Guide
To A More Successful Team At
http://www.nextlevelpurchasing.com/team-success-application.php?source=CharlesBlog

What Does The SPSM2 Certification Mean To The Purchasing Professional?

Ah, we are at the end of an historic day in which the groundbreaking SPSM2 Certification was announced. So this will be the last post on the SPSM2 and we will return to regular programming on this blog tomorrow.

Let me put something bluntly: In the purchasing and supply management profession, there are individuals regarded as top talent and there is everyone else.

In which category do you belong?

With the introduction of the SPSM2 Certification, the gap between the profession's top talent and everyone else is getting wider by the day. It has become easier for hiring companies, bosses, suppliers, and industry observers to know where you fit on the purchasing and supply management food chain.

So, if you have already earned the SPSM^® Certification, you are eligible to pursue the SPSM2 Certification and maintain your place among the elite in the profession. To learn more about continuing towards the SPSM2, visit http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com/spsm2.html

If you haven't begun your pursuit of the SPSM^® Certification yet, there is no better time than now. If you're serious about your career, don't be left behind. Learn how to get started towards your SPSM^® Certification at http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com/spsm.html.

The purchasing and supply management world is different today than it was yesterday. The standards for being the best are continually rising. Being the best you can be is a lifelong journey. If you are not putting forth the effort to stay ahead, the profession will pass you by.

And if you are putting forth the effort to stay ahead, you will be recognized for being head and shoulders above the rest.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

Video Footage From First SPSM2 Certification Award Presentation

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

First SPSM2 Certification Awarded To Ohio Purchasing Agent

Earlier today, I announced the launch of the SPSM2 Certification. Now, I am pleased to announce that the first SPSM2 Certification has been awarded!

Purchasing and supply management professionals in 2009 do things differently than they did ten or even just five years ago. To truly earn their paychecks, purchasing and supply management professionals have to work harder than ever to keep pace with the changes in the field.

Susan Lemley, a Purchasing Agent for the Crystal Clinic in Ohio, has embodied that spirit of continuous learning. Despite earning the SPSM Certification in 2007, Susan didn’t stop learning. In fact, between then and just a couple of months ago, she had already completed three of the four courses that would later become required curriculum for the SPSM2 Certification. Despite this being an extremely busy time for her, Susan accepted the opportunity to be one of the first to complete the balance of the SPSM2 Program, devoted herself to her studies, and passed the SPSM2 Exam.

There are purchasing professionals from 49 countries who have earned the SPSM Certification. But, as of today, only one has earned the SPSM2. Please help me congratulate the world’s first SPSM2 – Crystal Clinic’s own Susan Lemley.

Here is a photo of me presenting the SPSM2 certificate to Susan after a presentation arranged by Crystal Clinic's CEO. At the left is a bouquet of flowers from the CEO, who has obviously recognized and valued her achievement.





Coming later today: video footage from the presentation. Stay tuned!

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

The Big Purchasing Certification Announcement!

NEW OFFERING REDEFINES PURCHASING CERTIFICATION

PITTSBURGH, PA – July 1, 2009 – The purchasing certification space has been forever changed by the addition of a new certification offering, the SPSM2 Certification. Recognizing that the world of purchasing and supply management is constantly changing and that standards for the performance excellence of purchasing professionals are continually being raised, SPSM Certification provider Next Level Purchasing is releasing the SPSM2 Certification as a higher-level complement to the original certification. This release occurs on the fifth anniversary of the SPSM Certification, which has been earned by purchasing professionals in 49 countries worldwide.

The SPSM2 is not a replacement for the original SPSM Certification, but a higher level of achievement, similar to a master’s degree being a higher level compared to a bachelor’s degree. Building on the skills and knowledge that a purchasing professional acquires while earning their SPSM Certification, the SPSM2 adds training on processes that are becoming more significant in the purchasing field – international procurement, advanced negotiation, and managerial skills. The addition of the SPSM2 Certification will allow a purchasing professional’s certification to evolve with them and their career.

With unemployment rates on the rise, many purchasing professionals are pursuing purchasing certifications to provide them with an added edge for job retention and acquisition. In the past year, the purchasing field has seen other purchasing certifications become outdated resulting in the providers discontinuing the award of those certifications and replacing them with different designations, causing confusion in an already challenging job market. The SPSM Certification is designed to be a sustainable certification and by offering advancing levels, a purchasing professional can be assured that the investment they make in earning the purchasing certification is long-lasting.

"The scope of purchasing and supply management has been rapidly expanding and will continue to evolve, so the leading certification in the profession must be scalable," said Charles Dominick, SPSM, President and Founder of Next Level Purchasing. "With the introduction of the SPSM2 Certification, the SPSM family of certifications provides purchasing and supply management professionals with a clear path to higher levels of excellence in their work and success in their careers."

Next Level Purchasing is a leading provider of online training for purchasing professionals. Its training includes the globally-recognized SPSM^® Certification for world-class supply management success. Its services enable organizations to lower costs, support operations, and reduce risk by improving purchasing processes and expanding the capabilities of supply management organizations. Visit Next Level Purchasing at: http://www.nextlevelpurchasing.com/.

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Stay tuned - throughout the day today on this blog, I will be introducing the first purchasing professional who has earned the SPSM2, including photos and video, plus talking more about what the SPSM2 means for you.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

Big Purchasing Certification Announcement Tomorrow (7/1/09)!

Tomorrow, which is the fifth anniversary of the SPSM^® Certification, we will be making an announcement that will rock the purchasing certification world.

Yes, this is a positive development. A very positive one for those purchasing and supply management professionals and procurement departments who want to demonstrate exactly how capable they are.

We will be dropping hints throughout the day today on our Twitter page (@nextlevelpurch) - http://www.twitter.com/nextlevelpurch.

And tomorrow morning (about 9AM Eastern US time on July 1, 2009), we will make the announcement here on this blog.

Stay tuned!

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

Financial vs. Operational Procurement KPI's

I hope that you have enjoyed the article "10 Procurement KPI's, Part II."

While Part I featured financial KPI's used by senior management to assess and benchmark the relative contribution of their procurement teams, Part II is more focused on measuring the success of the day-to-day operations of the procurement group. Both types of measurements are necessary, but they are applied differently.

The financial KPI's are measured less frequently. They are more concerned with a high-level view of Procurement's contribution. They are used for leadership of the procurement function.

The operational KPI's are measured constantly. They deal more with managing the day-to-day procurement process.

While "management" tends to have almost a negative connotation when juxtaposed with "leadership," as discussed in the "Are You CPO Material?" podcast, both management and leadership are necessary for success. In the case of these procurement KPI's, it is unlikely that the financial KPI's will show top-notch performance unless solid management is in place to deliver good operational KPI's.

Let me close with a reminder that the big announcement that will rock the purchasing certification world will be issued on Wednesday July 1, 2009 right here on this blog. By the way, July 1, 2009 is the fifth anniversary of the SPSM^® Certification.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

Are You Prepared To Negotiate The Forthcoming Price Increases?

In many categories of goods or services, the old adage can apply: "what goes up, must come down." But that adage alone is actually incomplete.

It should be followed by "what goes down, must come up."

With the economy taking a nosedive last fall and continuing to stumble through the first half of this year, many purchasing professionals - whose companies needed cost savings to survive - did the logical thing: the renegotiated their contract pricing. Hurray!

However, doing so sent a message to the supply base.

What is that message?

Check out my guest post on eSourcicng Forum for the answer.

And don't forget: there will be a BIG announcement that will rock the purchasing certification world on Wednesday July 1, 2009.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

Procurement Training Quality Now More Transparent

Purchasing some services can be frightening. You are buying something that is intangible so, unlike buying products, you don't have complete certainty over what you are going to get in return for your money.

Procurement training, as a service, is no exception. However, Next Level Purchasing has added a new feature to our Web site to make the quality of our training more transparent.

We have just instituted a five-star rating system for each of our full-length, English-language online classes. When completing a class, students have the option to submit a rating of one to five stars and add a comment.

What's best is that you get to see every rating and comment submitted! If you go to our "Sign Up" page - http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com/registration.php - and scroll down to the list of courses, you will see the star ratings for each applicable course. Clicking on the stars will allow you to see each rating and comment submitted.

Transparency is important. Smart buyers need to understand the quality of a service before they buy it. And now, you can leverage the experiences of other purchasing professionals when deciding whether or not to sign up for Next Level Purchasing's training or which class to enroll in.

This rating system will be expanded to other areas of our site in the near future.

While we're excited about this announcement, it pales in significance to the announcement we are going to make on July 1, 2009. The July 1, 2009 announcement will rock the purchasing certification world!

Stay tuned!

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com

Whitepaper Wednesday - How CFO's Evaluate Big Purchases

Welcome back to this week's installment of Whitepaper Wednesday on the Purchasing Certification Blog.

As I did with last week's installment on the laws of leadership, I will focus this week's installment more on executive-level thinking. Specifically, I'll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled "CFO insights: Capital budgeting in the downturn: Four disciplines" from cfo.com and Deloitte.

This whitepaper is written in the context of an economic downturn. And, in such downturns, CFO's will closely scrutinize capital projects (i.e., purchases of expensive, long-term assets, such as equipment, facilities, vehicles, etc.).

Procurement may be involved either because it is seeking approval for a project of its own or because it is assisting an internal customer department with the total project. So, it is important to know what is going on in the mind of the CFO to know whether you stand a chance at getting approval for the project. The whitepaper does a good job of getting into the mind of the CFO.

The whitepaper starts off powerfully by stating: "The credit crisis and the rapid deterioration in the global economy have left many CFOs scrambling to cut costs and reprioritize budgets. Cash is king for now and finance organizations are scrambling to better forecast cash flows in and out of the company, reprioritize projects to rejuvenate cash inflows in the near term, [and] reprioritize projects to balance long-term capital plans and strategic goals with near-term cash flow and cost reduction objectives."

The whitepaper introduces four "disciplines" that CFO's can apply to their evaluation of capital projects as an alternative to across-the-board budget cuts. Here's a summary of each of these four disciplines...

1. Clean-Sheet Budgeting. This approach evaluates capital projects strictly on return on investment of each future dollar being spent, irrespective of what has already been spent. The whitepaper says that, under this discipline, "All projects should be quickly reassessed with a clean sheet." This approach can be scary to think that a company can have invested millions of dollars in a project only to cancel it and essentially waste all the money spent to date. But it is important to know how some CFO's think. And it's not uncommon to hear of such projects meeting this type of fate.

2. The Shortest Time To A Positive Benefit Discipline. This approach deals with how CFO's can prioritize several projects under consideration and invest in them in a phased - as opposed to an all-at-one time - sequence. It involves estimating the timeframe in which the organization can recoup its investment and then investing in those projects with the shortest time-to-ROI first.

3. The Less Than 100% Budget. This approach encourages the CFO to prod requestors for alternate scenarios rather than just one "full wish list." The CFO is encouraged to ask "[W]hat can be accomplished and in what timeframe with 70%, 80% or 90% of the proposed budget?"

4. The Discipline of Deferral. This approach encourages the CFO to explore whether or not a proposed project can be done later without major repercussions. The whitepaper also suggests using this approach to prioritize competing projects, saying "If two projects are of equal value in all other aspects, and if they are deferred by a year, one project might be significantly hurt (e.g., the opportunity to beat competition to the market with a new offering will be lost), while another project might simply achieve nearly the same level of benefits but these benefits occur one year later (e.g., a data warehousing initiative). Then the project likely to suffer the most from a deferral should be giving funding priority."

So, as you can see, this whitepaper has value for those trying to understand how senior management thinks. Hopefully, you are not only trying to understand senior management, but also aspiring to become senior management some day!

With this in mind, I recommend downloading (and keeping) a copy of this whitepaper for yourself. You can find it at CFO.com.

I know that about 75% of the readers of this blog are buyers and purchasing/supply managers. So I often do try to keep the content of the blog relevant to solving the problems you face on a day-to-day basis. However, I am also committed to helping you develop and advance in the profession. And I also want to appeal more to the directors, vice presidents, and CPO's who frequent this blog as well. So, in the coming weeks, you can expect to see more posts about leadership and executive-level thinking. Do you agree with this approach? Post a comment by clicking the comment link below. This blog is for you - I want to deliver exactly what you want. And the only way I can know what you want is for you to share your thoughts. Thank you in advance!

P.S. Whitepaper Wednesday will not appear next Wednesday (July 1, 2009) as this blog will feature a big announcement that will rock the purchasing certification world.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
Struggling To Have A Rewarding Purchasing Career?
Earn Your SPSM^® Certification Online At
http://www.NextLevelPurchasing.com