About Supply Management

Institutions seeking to thrive in today's fast-paced globally changing marketplaces require accelerated and different means for detecting what is needed, mechanisms for interpreting them, and effective processes for implementing them for their competitive advantage. Purchasing departments, traditional designed to buy what the organization already determined that it wanted, now stands challenged to expand into a new environment that focuses on the supply side of the institution and markets.

The imperative is clear: Focus on Supply Management's role, functions, and systems that constantly challenge and examine for strategic and operational efficiency and effectiveness within the institution. New orientations, techniques, methods, skills, and capabilities must continuously be sought and evaluated for potential use.

Transition to a New Purchasing

The cost of construction, equipment, supplies and services represents the largest share of Penn's annual operating budget that can be leveraged for cost containment. There is no other organization in the institution potentially more capable of producing significant return-on-investment than an evolutionary and revolutionary supply management organization.

As key stakeholders (senior management, internal customers, and external suppliers) demand increased value and uniqueness in central supply related organizations, simple continuous improvement and incremental changes of traditional functions have less and less effect for the organization. In seeking increasing contribution and value-add from Purchasing Services and its supply related business partners, the traditional act of buying comes under doubt and serious scrutiny. Instead, new relationships, systems, and linkages at higher levels of procurement are demanded. The organization needs to find and access resources, technologies, and ideas from the supply world.

In order to be successful in the future, the new Purchasing Services organization will require four core behavioral attributes:

• future oriented
• of interest and concern to senior management
• strategic in relation to the competitive imperatives of the organization
• identify what might provide value and uniqueness to the organization's offerings in its marketplaces