New skills for a new century!

　　New processes and innovation will require supply management professionals to obtain and retain focused skills for success in the future.
　　E-purchasing, supply chain management, total cost analysis, partnerships, and team-based activities are skills for the future. These skills typify just a few of the basics that the management of many organizations are expecting their supply managers to understand or master in today's fast-paced, ever changing world. Let's pretend we can just stop time and put all supply managers in a tank, mix them up with the newest skill sets, and presto! Out emerges the perfectly prepared, newly skilled supply manager. This would be nice, but unfortunately it's not an option anytime soon. What skills would be given to achieve the prepared supply manager? What skill sets should be achieved to successfully accomplish the new tasks? The Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies (CAPS) study, "A Skills-Based Analysis of the World-Class Purchaser," was designed to answer these questions.
　　The Top 10 Highly Rated Skills
　　Picture yourself in the time-frozen world above, where the clock has stopped and the only thing you have to do is focus on improving your skills. In this time freeze, what would you think would be important? Supply chain managers at some of the leading organizations in the United States did just that. Their findings may surprise you. The top 10 most highly rated skills were:
　　* Interpersonal communications
　　* Decision-making
　　* Teaming abilities
　　* Negotiation
　　* Customer focus
　　* Analytical abilities
　　* Influencing and persuasion
　　* Understanding business conditions
　　* Resolving conflicts
　　* Managing change
　　It's important to remember that a skill is the ability to use one's knowledge effectively. A skill is a developed ability, and usually this developed ability is acquired on-the-job or in formal training sessions. These top 10 rated skills are comprised of mostly interpersonal skills. Aside from the skills of decision-making and analytical abilities, the list focuses on the need to be successful in human interactions. Is it possible that while the nanosecond world of the Internet relieves many of the daily chores of the purchasing job, it will allow for the development of a more project-oriented supply manager? This newly focused supply manager may be the key connecting point in the entire supply chain.
　　Skill Sets are Changing - Tactical to Strategic
　　So how have these skills affected the changing role of the supply manager? What is important to remember is that it's not so much that the skills have changed - it's how those skills are applied. In fact, interpersonal communications and the ability to make decisions have been viewed as important skills in a supply manager's skill set for many years. Only now, the application and emphasis have changed. Instead of using interpersonal skills to expedite purchases, those skills are needed to develop relationships with suppliers and customers and to work as part of a cross-functional team. Decisions on many purchases are not so much the sole authority of the supply manager as they are often decided in a team environment.
　　As supply managers move to a more strategic and value-added emphasis, the job becomes different. Daily routine functions such as placing orders and expediting are delegated to users or are automated. Replacing these tasks are higher-level objectives such as developing new suppliers, negotiating shared information agreements with key suppliers, and developing a plan for an ideal supply base. It becomes much harder to measure the actual progress on many of these higher-level tasks. At the end of a day, a supply manager no longer should be bragging about placing 50 purchase orders and expediting three critical shipments. Rather than focusing on such functionally driven skills, the supply manager needs to look enterprise-wide and promote himself or herself as the key link between the final customer at the end of the supply chain and the supplier at the start of the chain.
　　Continuous Skill Improvements Contribute to the Bottomline
　　Research findings show that in organizations where interpersonal skills flourish, the environment allows supply managers to continually improve their skills. Developing skills is usually accomplished through a focus on professional development and training. In these organizations, supply management is viewed as a profit contributor and a team effort that delivers value. Once these skills are attained, the team members know the focus must be on solving problems, but in a very flexible framework because there are often many paths to a problem's solution. Above all, the supply manager needs to be ethical and maintain the trust and confidence of suppliers and customers.
　　Tie the New with Training
　　The findings of an updated CAPS purchasing education and training study will provide information about the specific trends, skills, and knowledge that will identify the differences in the challenges of the new environment. It's important to tie these new skills into a training program that provides firms the ability to undertake a competitive advantage in their operating environments. The bar has been raised and these new duties will require new approaches to training and development.