Keep Your Procurement Team Safe and Operations Moving

All organizations are wrestling with the steps they should take to keep their teams safe and operations moving.

Steps to Address Your Supply Chain

In a previous post on Coronavirus and Supply Risk Management, we discussed steps that procurement leaders can take in risk management and eSourcing to help your organization manage your supply during the pandemic. It’s one thing to send everyone home and hope for the best. It's another to address the issues that concern your supply chain. Use the following key steps to keep your team safe and operations moving: 

• Define a contingency plan for your organization. Plan how to run business as offices are shut down and a high number of employees are asked to work remotely or are incapacitated due to the pandemic.
• Have technology ready for virtual meetings and knowledge-sharing platforms such as strategic sourcing platforms.
• Define critical roles and back-up employees. Understand who manages critical tasks so you can identify back-ups for those people. 
• Use your tools in new ways. We heard from one Scanmarket customer who is using their eRFI functionality as a way to conduct online information-sharing.
• Track your projects in a project management system so you don’t have to “stop by someone’s desk” to get the latest.
• Enlist your HR department for their thoughts on how to find cross-trained or backup team members.
• Make sure that all team members have fully embraced eSourcing and moved all their information into your repository. You don’t want critical information to be in file cabinets or hard drives that can’t be accessed due to an office closure

Additional read: How to Ensure Complete Visibility Into Your S2C Process

Communicate with Your Team

Over-communicate with your team just as you do with your trading partners. Let them know how to access information, work with others, track projects and progress, and get help where needed.