Public sector procurement pros are doing the best they can to follow “best practices,” so they’re aware of where they’re falling short – and trying to target those areas for improvement.

Good intentions to perform “best practices” are focused in three areas:

• spend visibility
• process efficiency, and
• going “green” with procurement functions.

One underlying and somewhat perplexing theme of the survey, done by BravoSolution, was the perception that procurement staffers strongly believed in conducting joint procurement efforts with other departments and using Web-based procurement tools, but surprisingly few businesses actually followed through with the ideas.

The survey gathered information from more than 100 procurement pros.

Some significant findings:

• 59% of those surveyed said they felt their overall procurement process was inefficient or there was room for improvement.
• When asked about the effectiveness of e-sourcing, nearly 90% of Purchasing pros agreed it was faster, less expensive and made it easier to get information for suppliers.

One surprising stat: While there was agreement procurement operations were saving money over last year, nearly half of respondents didn’t know if that was the case or not.

If you’re wondering whether now’s a good time to make the push at your business for greater use of e-sourcing, it’s likely you’ll face a couple of hurdles.

Four roadblocks cited:

• insufficient top management support
• no formal budget
• lack of understanding of potential benefits, and
• internal resistance to change.

How many businesses felt they were on board with “green supply chain” efforts? Only 21%.

Finally, how many procurement pros are sharing best practice techniques with others at their company?

Four out of five say they’ve opened the door, but still have engaged in joint procurement activities. Also, less than half of procurement pros said they were using the Web for core functions, such as collecting supplier responses, managing and tracking supplier performance, and publishing official contract notifications.

Tags: budget, green supply chain, procurement, survey