Define Your Success Metrics

A well-thought-out strategy needs success metrics to show your progress and help you stay focused on the end game. It’s not just about return on investment. There are other metrics in the business that you should measure to ensure you’re getting maximum value from your new technology.

For one, metrics must be connected to the core business objectives. That means thinking about more than just outcomes. Look at your entire procurement operation and team from a high level and determine what you want to measure. From that vantage point, you can invest in those projects that improve the two or three outcomes that matter most to your team and your business.

A project will always have hiccups when things don’t go as planned. Success metrics support the project, allowing you to demonstrate areas where you are doing well to stakeholders clearly. 

Metrics help with the overall management of expectations internally and with design decisions. For example, say one of your success metrics is that documented purchase orders fully support 100 percent of all Purchase-to-Pay(P2P) transactions. That success metric will drive your activities throughout the project, including any design and policy decisions.

Examples of Success Metrics

Depending on your objectives, you can use many success metrics. A few include:

• Average cycle time of purchase requisition to purchase order (P2P)
• Net promoter score
• Spend under management savings  

Prochaska recommends focusing on at most four to six metrics. 

Avoid these Metrics

In purchasing, it’s essential to understand when the outcome should be connected to spend and when it should be connected to transactions.

For instance, if e-invoicing is one of your metrics, you want to measure it by something other than spend. The whole point of e-invoicing is to get away from manual transactions. Sometimes people get so focused on spend they forget that what they’re trying to measure is a reduction in manual transactions. In this case, you should look at the percentage of transactions rather than spend.

Be Aware of How Metrics Drive Behavior

What gets measured gets done. That’s why it’s essential to measure what you’re doing in a particular area to make sure it’s driving the behavior you want.

Prochaska cites an example of how her organization created a metric around the cycle time between creating a purchase requisition to the purchase order. Automated transactions were excluded from the metric. That meant that transaction wasn’t counted if the company bought from a catalog in someone else’s cycle time.

However, excluding these automated transactions from the metric resulted in buyers not being incentivized to buy more on the catalog. Once this changed to include automation, buyers were motivated to buy from the catalog again. This small change streamlined the procurement process by providing pre-negotiated options, standardized pricing, and electronic purchasing. Be sure to think through the consequences of each metric that you set.

Understand & Leverage Smart Project Management Principles

Procurement teams must leverage effective project management practices rather than just “winging it.” Conrad learned this directly when implementing Ariba for Intel in the late ‘90s. 

“The leadership team brought a PWC project manager onboard to assist. At first, it drove me crazy,” says Smith. “I wanted to get started on the project, and here we were burning $300/hour for a couple of weeks just planning out the project! Communications, decision making, issue management. All things I thought were very straightforward. The hourly cost was giving me stress and anxiety.”

The project ended up not only being a huge success for the small project team. It was a big win for Intel procurement, IT, and Ariba.  So big that IT leadership promoted Smith from the

20-person Ariba project to lead a flailing 200-person SAP implementation project.

“The stakes couldn’t be higher for me and the broader organization. It was pretty obvious from day one that the SAP project lacked those basic project management infrastructure elements that the project manager had helped me learn and implement 12 months earlier,” says Smith. 

By going back and retrofitting the project with these key foundational elements, his team turned the project from spinning and high risk to another great success for the company.

“Without a doubt, the investment with a project manager on the Ariba project was a huge lesson for me of the importance of the basics. Beyond the success with the Ariba project, well-paid tuition has guided my approach to many more projects since then.”

Consider the following best practices to enhance your procurement team’s project management capabilities and achieve better outcomes.

Thorough planning

First, prioritize thorough planning. Take the time to develop a detailed project plan that covers everything from objectives and timelines to resource requirements. This will provide a clear roadmap for your procurement team, enabling them to anticipate and tackle potential challenges and mitigate risks effectively.

Effective issue management

When it comes to issue management, don’t shy away from it. Hiccups happen along the way, but the key is to address them head-on. Encourage your team to identify and deal with issues promptly. Set up a system to track and prioritize those problems, assign responsibilities, and monitor their resolution. Doing so will avoid unnecessary delays and keep your project on track.

Transparent communication

Communication is the glue that holds everything together. Foster an open and transparent environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing information. Regularly update your team, stakeholders, and partners on project progress, milestones, and any changes. And be sure you have a solid communication plan in place. That means clear channels, frequency, and knowing who needs to be in the loop.

Well-defined decision-making

Informed decision-making is crucial. Having a clear process is better than making decisions on the fly. Define roles and responsibilities within your team and assign decision-makers for different aspects of the project. Create frameworks considering cost, quality, risk, and stakeholder impact. By streamlining your decision-making process, you’ll avoid confusion and keep things moving smoothly.

Success criteria

Encourage a culture of continuous improvement. Take the time to evaluate your project’s performance and learn from wins and setbacks. Conduct post-project reviews to identify areas where you can do better next time. Be open to making adjustments and adapting your plans along the way. With this mindset, you’ll constantly improve your project management practices and achieve better outcomes.

By investing in these project management best practices, you can avoid the pitfalls of “winging it” and be well on your way to achieving project success.

Get Leaders on Board

Smith says one of the most significant determinations of success is having someone at the leadership level actively taking responsibility for the project. So get key leaders and decision-makers involved from the start. 

“Ninety percent of the time when people contact us post facto and say, ‘This didn’t go so well. The technology’s not working for us, or it wasn’t adopted,’ one of the main factors is because the leader was not truly involved,” says Prochaska.

Assess Your Skill Set

This may be due to fear or overwhelm: What happens if something goes wrong? What if there are integration issues? What are the questions I should be asking? And who do I ask?

“I think it’s really smart to think about that as a leader—do I have the skill set to do this?” Prochaska recommends. “And if you don’t, develop a role like that where you can hire someone to be that person.”

Build a Team of People Smarter Than You

When building your dream team, surround yourself with individuals who are smarter than you. This includes team members who bring innovative ideas and a willingness to learn and apply their skills to the project. Also, consider people from other teams or with prior experience in similar projects. Consider bringing in team members with a digital transformation background, even if they lack procurement experience, to complement your skills and knowledge of the company. 

Recognizing the gaps in your team and actively filling them is crucial for success. Returning and delegating instead of doing a gap assessment of the situation is easy. Ask yourself, “Where do I need more talent? Where do I need more training?” Then, “start investing in yourself and your team to fill in those gaps,” says Smith. “Instead of retreating behind something, be the front leader to keep it moving forward.”