As you are quite familiar, we have been wrestling with this topic of Category Management (“CM”) for many, many years and have developed a number of scars along the way helping many clients put Category Management programs in place. We recently conducted a workshop on this topic, and I thought there were some points during that discussion that perhaps deserve repeating. You have of course seen this picture many a times from us, so I use it only to provide a common context:
And I’m sure you’ve seen similar looking models from others and the good news is that many others have also started putting a lot more focus on Value (and we welcome them all to the party – albeit a little late 😊).
One of the conversations we often get into is why should we move to CM and we have curated a number of the points that we raise:
Survival – can’t squeeze suppliers anymore – meaning that to continue to provide value from your efforts and the suppliers, you will have to move towards CM. Otherwise, our professions and your career won’t survive and I don’t think I’m being dramatic?
Elevate the “function” and significantly advance your career – And this is the converse of the point above, it’s a major opportunity
Expand your reach within your company (C-Level)
Increase your strategic competencies – Yes, here it is again 😊
Play the role of Strategic Business Partner
Convert Stakeholders to Champions and Sponsors – This is probably the most underrated benefit of CM.
Start influencing top line (Revenue) also – We are slowly but steadily starting to see this emerge in many of our client’s radar screens – finally!!
Drive innovation – This is another point that is also being acknowledged as only possible under CM AND many clients are recognizing that it is something that suppliers can provide alot of value for.
I’m sure that you would be able to add to this list and would love to hear from you.
The next question then becomes what does an organization need to have to be a World Class CM organization? These are some of the characteristics that we have defined over the last decade on this topic (not in any order by the way):
Standard, documented, repeatable process(s): Probably the most boring and mundane item on the list but try running geographically dispersed organizations especially in these days of mostly remote work
Resources with strategic competencies: 😊
Standard, scalable toolkit
Enabling technology – We are now identifying this as a bigger risk for our clients. The changes in technology represent a major competitive differentiator if you are not staying on top of your game. We have been able to get away with complacency but not anymore. The risk of being left behind is tremendous and long lasting.
Shared learning
Knowledge management: Combined with the one above, these are elements that are helping other organizations create significant competencies that are allowing them to get to CM much faster.
Change Management expertise
Problem Solving expertise
Again, I’m sure you can add to this list and would love to hear from you but feel free to use this as a fairly good list to benchmark against. I’m sure most of you are well underway if not done already with getting your programs launched for this year. Is this the year you are making your way towards CM? Do some of these points above line up with what you are thinking? Drop us a line and let us know 😊.
