Professional Blogs #1 - The Times They Are a Changin
I left University in 2006, shortly afterwards the UK slid in to financial meltdown. Companies were struggling, unemployment was rife and even the large and iconic brands, like Woolworths, were disappearing. I was lucky enough to actually get a job during these dark times and started working for a procurement outsourcing company. At the time, Procurement was suffering from an image crisis. It was a reactive process, often marginalised within companies. It was seen as a function that either dictated to teams what they could or couldn’t do or were seen as responsible for large scale redundancies - all in the name of scrimping some savings year-on-year. Then the economic downturn occurred and the winds changed. As companies all over the UK were not only forced to make savings, they were more importantly trying to continue to improve but with less money to do it. Forward thinking procurement teams and companies, such as the one I worked for saw these tough economic times as a...