Increasing Procurement Maturity and Agility in Parallel
A conversation with Jennifer Ulrich, Senior Director of Advisory at Corcentric.
The disruptions of the last year have made a strong, independent business case for procurement teams and professionals to become more agile. The fact that each organization is in a different place on their maturity journey, however, means that agility can take different forms and require different skillsets. Each procurement organization will have to define what agility means in the context of their company and make investments to achieve it.
One challenge all procurement teams will face is resisting the temptation to define agility or maturity based upon the events of 2020. If they do, they will find that they are optimizing their people, processes, and technologies to succeed in conditions that may never exist again – while missing a critical opportunity to prepare for the next set of unexpected events.
In this Corcentric Conversation, Jennifer Ulrich, Senior Director of Advisory at Corcentric, joined us to discuss whether there is a connection between a procurement organization’s maturity level and their ability to support the enterprise through increased agility. She answers questions about:
- Whether maturity naturally leads to agility or if it can allow procurement to become fixed in their ways
- If there is a thing as “too much agility?”
- The central role that data quality and visibility play in enabling greater procurement agility
Thank you for listening. Be sure to tune in to our next Corcentric Conversation. Until next time!
About our Guest
Recognized industry-wide as an authority on Procurement, Finance, Digital Transformation and Category Management, Jennifer Ulrich boasts over a decade of consulting experience. She has successfully led large-scale initiatives for both direct and indirect spend categories in industries including: biotech, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and consumer packaged goods. Corcentric’s clients trust her to provide the cross-functional procurement knowledge and innovative strategies necessary to develop transformation roadmaps and realize long-term results. Her efforts have also included developing customized training programs for Strategic Sourcing, Contracting & Negotiations, Spend Analytics, Procurement Process Redesign, and Supplier Relationship Optimization.
