Proud to be a purchasing pro
Anne MillenPorter -- Purchasing, 9/16/2004 6:00:00 AM
More than 20 years ago, Jack O'Connor, and James P. Morgan, then publisher and chief editor of PURCHASING handed down a new law: No longer would the magazine use the word "buyer" where "purchasing professional" would do. They created an annual Medal of Professional Excellence for the function. And, with PURCHASING's first Top 100 spend report, this venerable publishing team started pushing U.S. companies to tally up—to estimate at least—their total annual spends, so that CEOs and chief financial officers might see procurement and supply chain operations as worthy of serious attention and investment; so that really smart people—rising management stars—might see the function as a career path rather than corporate backwater.
O'Connor and Morgan were way ahead of the times but dead on when it came to foreseeing (dare we say helping to catalyze?) the radical transformation that would take place in the procurement function through the 1990s and early 2000s. It's appropriate then, that Morgan, PURCHASING's editorial director emeritus, should be back to write this issue's Profile of the Purchasing Pro (page 45) in which he reports that "today's purchasing professional seems to really like the job he/she is doing and is more likely to have chosen purchasing as a career path than in the past." In short, writes Morgan, "large numbers of purchasing professionals look upon their jobs in terms of playing a significant role in corporate profitability."
Two stories in this issue underscore Morgan's point:
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Motorola has made a big move to centralize procurement over the past year under chief procurement officer Theresa Metty, reports James Carbone, executive editor, electronics (see the story). Already more than half way to a $1 billion cost savings goal, Metty and her highly professional team are indeed playing a big role in corporate profitability.
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Federal Signal, likewise, is now reaping the multimillion dollar rewards of a CEO's vision and recruitment of Matt Saviello as chief procurement officer to leverage the diversified company's considerable annual spend. For details, check out Jason T. Seigel's story.
While the transformation of procurement may not be complete in all organizations, Morgan reports tellingly that—given a chance to go back—71% of purchasing pros would choose the profession all over again.
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