Category Management and Strategic Sourcing
Course record permalink
- Format — Course, 24 hours (2.5 days, or module by module)
- Audience — Purchasing and procurement teams; supply chain leaders
- Practice area — Sourcing
- Led by — Dr. Kevin Westbrook — background and credentials
Most purchasing teams are measured on price and managed by requisition. Category management is the alternative: a plan for a category of spend, built on an assessment of the market, the value chain and the risk, and reviewed on a schedule rather than when something goes wrong. This is the longest programme in the catalogue, and it is built to be run with a purchasing team on one of their own categories.
What the programme covers permalink
- Strategic purchasing, defined. What it is and what it is not — the step-by-step plan behind a category, the roadblocks that derail it, and who owns what on the purchasing team.
- Category reviews. The events that should trigger a review, the business case for intervening, and the strategic and tactical objectives a review sets for itself.
- Assessing the category. Competitive forces, the value chain and the company's position in it, dependency, opportunity and improvement analysis, and category risk — the assessment that turns a review into a plan.
- Running the review. A project on a real category, worked through the sessions, ending in a presentation to leadership that carries the analysis and the recommendation.
Who it suits permalink
Purchasing and procurement teams, and the supply chain leaders who own spend. It can run as a 2.5-day programme or as individual modules across a longer period, which suits teams who cannot leave the plant for a week. It links directly to the practice's sourcing and supply chain work.
What a team leaves with permalink
A completed category assessment for one of their own categories, a review plan with owners and dates, and a presentation they have already made once — to the room.