Edbury Daley

Unique opportunity to build a Procurement Talent Pipeline

A.Daley — Thu, 03 May 2012 20:17:16 +0000

This year the entire UK will be looking forward to major international events taking place on our soil. There has been a huge effort required to organise these events and many people have gained outstanding work experience in the process. However they will all be looking for new positions after this summer.

We at EdburyDaley were asked by the organisation’s CPO to act as a specialist recruiter for Procurement, Supply Chain, Vendor Management and Contracts Management. We can proudly say we assisted in identifying some outstanding talent over the past 18 months on behalf of the organisation responsible for coordinating these events. As a result we are now uniquely placed to help these people find new roles.

Due to our success, EdburyDaley were recently invited to take part in a ‘Talent Marketing Exercise.’ Over the next 3-6 months almost all the people in this organisation are going to be finishing their contracts and looking for new opportunities, many in Procurement and associated areas like Vendor Management.

EdburyDaley have been granted to access this unique talent pool consisting of up to 8,000 professionals across their entire organisation. We are able to contact each member individually and to view their experience and relevance to positions within your company freely. We are interested in hearing from our potential clients as to how this unique talent pool opportunity can be of value in forthcoming recruitment campaigns.

What could this offer your organisation?

Since EdburyDaley have complete access to this talent pool we can:

Showcase your current and future requirements to the talent pool in an effective confidential fashion

Quickly identify skills and expertise relevant to your business’ needs

Build ‘ talent pipelines’ of individuals relevant to your organisation that you may potentially recruit later in the year.

Why these individuals stand out on the current market?:

These professionals have generally been on a competitive market rate salaries. This means you will be potentially getting more experience for your budget, rather than potentially paying a premium to recruit someone from a rival organisation.

Working with this organisation these people have gained some unique procurement experience.

They have worked to the pressure of an unmovable deadline

They have had to deliver major projects to extremely tight budgets

These professionals have worked in complex organisational matrices of colleagues and stakeholders

Their high quality of work is on show to a global audience of 4 billion people

Why EdburyDaley were selected?

Having worked with the organisations CPO previously, he knew that EdburyDaley have regularly demonstrated the qualities that enable us to consistently deliver excellent Procurement, Supply Chain, Vendor Management and Contract Management candidates for our blue chip clients. Our particular strengths are as follows:

We are outstandingly well networked across the UK Procurement community from CPO’s through to the best emerging graduate talent.

A contingency service which encompasses a range of resourcing methods enabling us to find candidates when competitor organisations have run out of ideas.

Our ‘Talent Identification Programme’ where we proactively research the most competitive areas of the market has proved invaluable when it comes to reacting quickly to client needs and finding candidates for the most challenging role to fill.

We have a passion for all of our clients. Through getting to understand their unique needs we are able to be precise in our search and find only the relevant candidates available for interview.

Deep market knowledge – we know where to find the best available talent for our clients. In this instance we were able to source candidates whom were available immediately, and would consider Fixed Term Contracts (FTC’s) rather than the more lucrative day rates.

Considerable experience of working closely with RPO’s respecting their reporting structure and processes.

What were the challenges?

As always the case with major events, they are run to tight budgets. Therefore EdburyDaley had to source candidates for a variety of FTC’s and interim day rates which could be considered to be below the market rate. This had to be done without compromising on quality.

Candidates were often needed at short notice and had to be mobilised and prepared for interviews in a short time frames.

Very specific talent and category expertise needed to be found. Often the skill set required for the client would be highly niche and EdburyDaley would need to source very rare experience.

Our results:

We achieved a 90% conversion rate on all roles over the past 18 months despite the challenging conditions outlined above.

EdburyDaley knew how to sell this ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunity to candidates and make sure our client secured the best talent. This was achievable by EdburyDaley understanding the client needs and USP’s.

We completed difficult, budget pressured FTC’s for the client, still in the short time frames and never compromising on quality. FTC’s are the most challenging roles to recruit for.

Due to our expert knowledge and network, we know how to find the best available professionals quickly and were able to produce a list of candidates ready for interview often within 48 hours of briefing.

We were able to complete placements within the Security, Transport, Venues and Infrastructure and Procurement teams. We were referred into other teams due to our success.

Due to our search processes, databases and expertise we are able to find even some of the more obscure experience that our clients need

We were able to complete projects for Procurement Analyst, Contracts Manager, Senior Procurement Manager and Vendor Managers

To discuss how EdburyDaley can help your business identify the talent it needs please contact Andrew Daley on 0161 776 4603 or andrew@edburydaley.com

Procurement Market Update Q2 2012

A.Daley — Wed, 18 Apr 2012 11:21:55 +0000

In Q4 of 2011 our Quarterly Market Update was the most positive it had been for a couple of years with clear evidence that the job market was showing signs of improvement.

Since then we have constantly been able to report a gradual improvement in the market for both interim and permanent procurement opportunities, and the start of this year has shown clear signs that there is a genuine battle for the best available talent in the market place.

We’ve seen candidates having to choose between multiple offers, clients increasing budgets to attract the skills and experience they need when previously this would have been out of the question, and the return of counter offers at resignation stage.

These are all classic characteristics of a strong job market, so we firmly believe this demonstrates very healthy market conditions. That is great news for all of us except those struggling to attract the best available talent they need for their business. (If this is you we suggest you call Andrew Daley on 0161 776 4603 to discuss how we can help)

From a job seeker’s perspective, the positive market conditions that we have been reporting for the last 18 months have continued in Q1 of this year despite some gloomy economic news, so we now have a healthy job market for both interim and permanent for procurement professionals.

Here are some further observations on the current market conditions:

There is generally a lot less caution on salaries although budgets remain very tight in certain organisations. Where companies have the budget to attract the best available candidates this is a real advantage in the “battle for talent” which is most definitely on in key areas of indirect spend like IT and HR.

Hannah Jackson who particularly specialises in FMCG has also highlighted areas of direct spend such as ingredients and packaging where there is growing demand for strong candidates, particularly for permanent appointments. Hannah has also noticed a shortage of available interim candidates with indirect spend experience in the FMCG market. If you have these skills please contact Hannah directly.

We noted these market conditions late last year in this article Where is the demand for procurement talent?

Contractor day rates continue to creep up and there are less interim specialists available than there were as recently as 6 months ago. Category demand is greatest in the classic areas of indirect spend like IT, Marketing, HR and Facilities.

Restrictions around additional headcount being approved for new hires are much less commonplace than they were 12 months ago. We have yet to experience this issue this year but there have been examples of this in the last 18 months.

Furthermore, as mentioned above there have been several examples recently of additional budget being signed off to ensure companies are able to make key appointments, even if it means bending salary bands.

There is clear growth in the Consulting market demonstrated by increased demand for experienced talent evident, not only across the big players, but also amongst the growing number of niche Procurement & Supply Chain specialists that appear to be gaining market share.

There is also significant demand for those who can combine business development expertise with project and/or business leadership skills. We are particularly interested in speaking to anyone with this background who is considering entering the job market.

Through our excellent network in the consulting market we have been able to work on some impressive transformation projects recently. Sourcing candidates with the skills required to enhance a procurement function going through a period of change has become something of a speciality for us as outlined in this case study. Please contact Chris McGowan if you have strong skills in category management, procurement transformation or stakeholder engagement as we have constant demand for this experience.

This work provides further evidence that many businesses are still really discovering the importance of a high quality procurement capability. This has particularly been the case when procurement departments have proved their value during the troubled economic climate of recent years.

Many of these companies are now expanding their departments which is adding to the demand for staff. Interestingly we covered this in some research during the recession, the results of which are here – The impact of the current economic condition on procurement and it’s pleasing to note that the trend continues.

To discuss any of the issues raised here please contact us as follows:

Andrew Daley, Director – to discuss identifying the talent you need for your team, opportunities in procurement and supply chain consulting or senior management appointments.

0161 776 4603 andrew@edburydaley.com LinkedIn profile

Hannah Jackson, Principal Consultant – Hannah specialises in the FMCG, Travel & Leisure sectors, so please contact her if you have specific industry experience in these areas.

0161 776 4608 hannah@edburydaley.com LinkedIn Profile

Christopher McGowan, Senior Consultant – Chris specialises in all areas of indirect spend, Consulting and contract roles.

0161 776 4605 chris@edburydaley.com LinkedIn Profile

Raluca Pirvu, Senior Resourcing Consultant – Raluca manages our candidate database so please send her your CV if you are looking for a new role whether it be interim or permanent.

0161 776 4606 raluca@edburydaley.com LinkedIn Profile

Procurement Career Advice

A.Daley — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 15:09:52 +0000

We were recently asked by Supply Management for some basic advice for job seekers in the procurement market and here’s the resulting article http://www.supplymanagement.com/careers/career-tips-april-2012/?locale=en

If you wish to discuss this or require more detailed career advice please contact us on 0161 776 4603.

Here are some more articles we’ve been asked to contribute to by Supply Management on career related issues:

http://www.supplymanagement.com/analysis/features/2008/talent-fishing/?locale=en

http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2008/buyers-keep-quiet-on-career-plans/?locale=en

http://www.supplymanagement.com/news/2010/recruitment-market-on-the-up/?locale=en

Edbury Daley’s Track Record in Procurement & Supply Chain Consulting

A.Daley — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:54:38 +0000

Edbury Daley is a niche procurement and supply chain recruitment consultancy led by highly experienced Directors with outstanding networks across the profession.

We have numerous FTSE 100 clients and significant experience of recruiting in the consulting market. Our strengths in this area include:

Highly developed network of contacts at CPO and departmental leadership level.

A clear understanding of the specific skills required to form a broad “consulting tool kit.”

A proven track record of sourcing candidates with experience in Management Consulting, Transformation Projects, BPR, Procurement Systems, Project Leadership and Business Development.

Great experience of knowing exactly where to look to identify candidates with outstanding academic backgrounds and the consulting tool kit referred to above.

We understand the market dynamics of the procurement consulting job market and use this to advise both our clients and potential candidates.

Working with Edbury Daley can have four significant benefits for experienced Procurement and Supply Chain Consultants. They are:

Keeping up to date with what’s happening in the Consulting job market

A potential source of excellent candidates when you are hiring

A useful source of information about moves and changes in the broader procurement job market.

A recruiter you can trust to recommend to your clients when they need the staff to support your transformation projects – here’s our procurement transformation case study

As a result of our recent work both with some of the worlds leading consulting businesses and a handful of excellent niche procurement consultancies, we have experienced a noticeable increase in the demand for experienced Consultants.

With our increased activity in this area we are even better placed than ever to offer both personal career guidance and recruitment advice to those seeking the best talent available to grow their business.

Property

admin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:26:32 +0000

For developers, planning constraints, urban regeneration and the push for sustainable communities have created new challenges and redoubled old ones. A greater emphasis on high density mixed use developments alongside traditional housebuilding has meant the recruitment of those with commercial, residential and social housing development expertise. Specific project led positions have emerged to successfully manage high value, high profile schemes. Having the right individual is pivotal to delivering the project and the profit on time.

Finding experienced people for large Regeneration projects is increasingly difficult, and having the right contacts and knowing who to talk to is crucial. At Edbury Daley we have a strong network of contacts particularly in Regeneration and Social Housing. We use over 25 years of market knowledge to identify experienced professionals in the industry.

Property Advisors are evolving too. In tandem with established service offerings, a number have found new areas of growth in full life cycle consultancy to public and private sector clients in areas such as education, social housing, mixed use and regeneration schemes. The need to manage consultancy projects, multi-disciplinary teams and client relationships over a number of years requires multi-skilled and very talented property professionals. Identifying those who can combine all these facets is critical in a changing property advisory marketplace.

Procurement

admin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:22:24 +0000

No function has seen a growth in influence within major corporations to surpass that of Procurement in recent years. It is always at the forefront of mergers and acquisitions, a leading agent of change, increasingly popular in the board room, and now at the heart of business strategy with issues like outsourcing and strategic supplier management.

We’ve observed these and many other trends and adapted our methods to suit today’s market. Our experience of focusing on this industry since 1998 enables us to add value to your recruitment methods in a number of crucial areas.

We know who’s developing the best people, embracing technology most effectively, where the innovators are and how best to find and attract the right people for your business.

Procurement has a special role to play in modern industry, and we can find the people to enhance your team’s capability and achieve your objectives.

The Careers In Housebuilding Recruitment Survey

A.Daley — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 19:37:08 +0000

We launched The Careers in Housebuilding Recruitment Survey earlier this year and already have some very interesting data on the job market, much of it pointing to changes in the way in which people look for career opportunities. This is of particular interest in the current economic climate with developers facing a depressed housing market yet still reporting some encouraging results. This has prompted the green shoots of a recovery in the housebuilding job market but it is still early days. The headlines from our research so far are:

85% of housebuilding professionals surveyed so far prefer applying directly to employers than through recruitment agencies

89% of respondents so far prefer specialist job boards like www.careersinhousebuilding.co.uk to the leading generalist job boards

Over 70% find social media like Facebook & Twitter helpful to keep up to date with job news

We plan to publish all the findings from our research early in the new year so if you haven’t contributed yet, please find 5 minutes to complete the 11 multiple choice questions here.

Procurement Systems & Skills – Are we in Balance? Survey Results

admin — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 10:05:22 +0000

Procurement professionals confirm the investment in enabling IT is not creating enough value – and not in balance with the need for on-going skills development.

105 Consulting Perspectives
We set out on this survey with the intention of assessing the trade-off between systems and skills in Procurement, and did not find what we had expected! The combination of tough economic times, requiring business functions to be evermore effective, and the history of systems investment that has taken place over the past five or more years, intuitively indicated that many organisations would be leveraging their technology investment, and operating at a less tactical level than before.

Why might we have expected that outcome? Three simple reasons.

The basic expectation that systems improve efficiency, and enable better performance;
Systems help ensure consistent and compliant adherence to processes and policies;
The data captured by systems provides more accurate information with which to make better decisions for the future.

Rather surprisingly we appear to have stumbled upon an area where the deployment of systems is much more ad hoc than we expected; the value they add to the enterprise is regarded with more scepticism than we would have predicted; and the up-skilling that we thought would have been made possible by the existence of enabling technology, is not widespread. The bulk of the value from the technology deployed appears aligned to improving transactional efficiency and compliance. We are intrigued that only a minority of respondents felt the technology supports them on their strategic procurement agenda. This perhaps supports our view of the need to build improved procurement capability through skills development, in parallel with technology.

Read more in the full report. Download here.

Why a leading management consultancy recommended edburydaley to a key client when they needed the people to transform their procurement function.

A.Daley — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 13:54:32 +0000

Headlines

New Head of Procurement appointed with six weeks of briefing

Three Category Managers appointed within nine weeks of briefing

Over 80% of candidates submitted were invited for interview

Background

A market leading Management Consultancy were engaged by an international passenger transportation company to effect a major procurement transformation, which would have an impact across the entire organisation . The project was driven by a dynamic, forward thinking CFO who truly understood the value of a world class Procurement function.

The principle aims of the project were to develop a more influential and effective procurement function incorporating:

• True Category Management methodology

• Ability to engage and influence key stakeholders across the business

• Delivery of hard measurable savings to the bottom line

Recommended to the CFO by a Partner of the big 5 consultancy in question, edburydaley were engaged as the sole recruiting partner to identify a short list of candidates for the Head of Procurement role.

Despite the seniority of the position, we were able to employ a contingency search approach utilising our extensive network to source the successful candidate. This approach negated the need for a lengthy and more costly Search & Selection process normally associated with this level of appointment.

Once the Head of Procurement was in place edburydaley’s next task was to identify four Senior Category Managers for key areas of indirect spend, including IT and Marketing. These two spend areas are highly competitive for the best available talent.

A detailed and thorough brief featured the following key requirements:

• Ability to define and implement a category specific procurement strategy.

• Influence key stakeholders across Europe to achieve consensus in traditionally complex areas

• Manage some very specific supplier challenges including a monopoly supplier

• One position required a broad range of language skills

• Work to strict salary guidelines in a particularly competitive area of the market

Methods

edburydaley took this project on with the aim to produce fast and efficient recruitment results. We assembled a project team to act as sole supplier to our client and used a variety of resources to identify potential candidates including:

• Database search

• Broad range of online resources, including using advanced research tools

• Designed a discrete advertising campaign using several market leading job boards

• Extensive networking across our contacts in the procurement sector

Statistics

• Five out of every six candidates submitted were invited for first interview.

• A third of candidates interviewed were asked back for second stage.

• With two of the roles recruited for we always had a reserve candidate whom would have been offered if the preferred candidate turned down the employment offer.

• We had three offers accepted within nine weeks of initial instruction on the Category Management roles.

• Three of the Category Managers started within three months of the roles being released to edburydaley.

• A broad range of relevant candidates were identified through various sourcing methods.

• These featured different levels of experience and varied backgrounds to give the client genuine choice.

• We sourced candidates from across the UK and Europe.

Due to this success edburydaley were asked to also source candidates for a Vendor Manager role focusing on business critical IT Outsourcing contracts. Recruitment for this position had been historically problematic and the vacancy had been open for some time.

edburydaley immediately identified two stand out candidates and helped the client reach offer stage within seven weeks of briefing us on the role, despite a three week period between first and second interviews. We had also identified an additional reserve candidate whom would have been offered if the preferred candidate had not have accepted the role.

Summary

• edburydaley has again demonstrated the qualities that enable us to consistently deliver excellent Procurement and Vendor Management candidates for our blue chip clients. Our particular strengths include:

• We are outstandingly well networked across the UK Procurement community from CPO’s through to the best emerging graduate talent.

• A contingency service which encompasses a range of resourcing methods enabling us to find candidates when competitor organisations have run out of ideas.

• Our Talent Identification Programme where we proactively research the most competitive areas of the market (e.g. Category Managers for Indirect spend) has proved invaluable when it comes to reacting quickly to client needs and finding candidates for the most challenging roles.

Project Team

Andrew Daley – Director

Account Manager & Sourcing Lead for the Head of Procurement appointment – 0161 776 4603

Chris McGowan – Consultant

Sourcing Lead for Category & Vendor Management appointments – 0161 776 4605

Hannah Jackson – Principal Consultant

Candidate Sourcing for all roles as part of our project team – 0161 776 4608

Where Is The Demand For Procurement Talent?

A.Daley — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:56:31 +0000

Despite some challenging economic conditions, we at EdburyDaley continue to see evidence that the procurement job market is still in much better shape than most other professions.

We have recently been the recruiting partner for several transformation projects where large PLCs have driven procurement to the forefront of their business. Such opportunities are always attractive to strong candidates so this has enabled us to identify some outstanding talent in the following areas:

Graduates with 3-6 years procurement experience

At Edbury Daley we appreciate the importance of identifying the Procurement Leaders of the future. We specifically target ambitious candidates coming through graduate schemes from the leading developers of procurement talent. The competition for such people is strong in the current climate, particularly as the salaries represent excellent value for the broad range of skills they offer.

Category Management – Indirect Spend

In the aforementioned transformation projects, several of the organisations in question have looked for accomplished Category Managers with experience in classic areas of indirect spend. We have identified some outstanding candidates as a result of these searches, particularly in Marketing, HR, FM and Professional Services.

IT category expertise in particular is in much greater demand than 12 months ago. This article is quite interesting: Global IT spending to rise

Senior Sourcing Managers / Global Category Leads

With so many businesses still seeking to effect real change in how their procurement function operates, the need for “heavyweight” Category Leaders with the gravitas and credibility to influence senior stakeholders remains strong. The ability to develop and implement a sourcing strategy at senior management level is not as easily available as many perceive but we have had great success in this area recently.

Supplier Relationship Manager

As previous readers of our research know Supplier Relationship Management has become increasingly high profile in recent years. In fact, relationships with suppliers are more important than ever. There are currently several outstanding candidates looking to move, ideally to an organisation seeking to develop its SRM capability.

If your business needs to identify the best available talent in Procurement or SRM, then it’s time to talk to us about how we can have a positive impact on your recruitment.