The role of Procurement is transcending from service function to business strategy partner. The necessity for top procurement executives to manage talent well is not only pressing but complex.

What qualities are important to identify and develop in order for Procurement to remain true to your corporate strategy? How to build the right culture for strategic forward thinking and what are the risks to be recognized as functionally disabled? How to tailor talent plans to address different regional needs and business objectives? How to differentiate in the talent marketplace by going beyond financial incentives and creating customized retention strategies?

Aimed to provide a perfect platform for top procurement executives to address the major talent challenges as well as to share the best strategies and practices, VCIntegration hosted the Supply Chain Executive Gathering on November 25^th, 2015, in Shanghai, China.

The report is a brief summary of the event aimed to provide readers with an overview of the essential information discussed at the Supply Chain Leaders Round Table hosted by VCIntegration on November 25, 2015, in Shanghai, China.

What kinds of talent you are looking for?

Many sourcing organizations find it difficult to recruit the right people, but I think the fundamental question should be: What kind of competencies we are looking for? What I am hearing is that he or she is looking for someone with good technical background, with excellent communication skills, and also can do a lot of things.

I think we need both soldiers and generals. My experience is, it is never difficult to find procurement people, it is difficult to develop procurement leaders. At the lower level, I take whatever I could get, they are not the best people, I invest a lot in training and coaching, I try to build up slowly from one side, the hard skills, and on the other side, the soft skills, which is more important. But for middle to high level, if we look at requirements of Procurement today, it's very different from what it was 20 years ago. I need talent to create new strategies, to transform the purchasing function, and to bring the organization to the next level.

We are global companies operating in Asia; the headquarter is so far way so what is happening in China? And we all know China is getting more and more important. We do not need guys to take the decisions back from the headquarter, we need those who can influence the headquarter to make the right decision for the region. I believe leadership, influence and innovation are the top 3 attributes.

I need people with engineering or technical background (better to be category specific), with good commodity knowledge, but then, I found most of them are hands on guys, they do not speak good English, which makes it difficult when we need to have global meetings or oversea conference calls.

I was in BD with IBM, Deloitte, and Ariba. IBM sells IT solutions, instead of talking to the CIO, we talk to the CEO; because CIO do not understand business. Later when I was with Ariba, we sell spend management solutions, instead of talking to the procurement people, we talk to CFO and CEO, because we know procurement do not understand much about the financial language of CEO and CFO.

So the important question here is: If language is an important skill, is it all about English? Do we really understand the needs of our internal stakeholders and communicate on the basis of shared value? Do we really understand the business language of our CEO or CFO?

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The European Institute of Purchasing Management (EIPM) was created over 20 years ago by Companies for Companies. Today through its different programs, the EIPM trains and educates each year more than 4000 purchasing professionals worldwide in 9 different languages in Europe and through its branches in partnership. The EIPM Vision is to be the Leading Institute in Learning (Education, Research and Training) in Strategic Sourcing and Supply Management.

The EIPM is a unique Learning centre in the world offering such a complete range of solutions for Executives in Procurement and Supply Management including:

- Certifying Course

- In-Company Training

- MBA

- Talent assessment