We are pleased to announce that we are launching our new research project into The Importance of Supplier Relationship Management.  The questionnaire will be available for much of the summer to ensure we can attract the greatest number of participants so if you want to comment or prompt a discussion before the results are published, please feel free to contribute to this blog.

Vendor Management & Supplier Relationship Management – A Recruiter’s perspective

There’s no doubt we’ve seen a noticeable increase in the number of specialist roles in this area that we have been asked to recruit for.  This has been a trend for the last three years particularly, and we have experienced this most in services sectors like banking, consultancy and particularly IT services. 

Recruiting managers usually want a specialist in supplier management to fill their jobs rather than someone who has done some work in this area as part of a broader procurement or sourcing remit, whilst job seekers who enjoy the vendor management element of purchasing will seek specialist roles in this area.   

There is of course only a finite pool of vendor management specialists, so if demand grows further, we will have some very interesting market conditions.   This could possibly be reminiscent of the strong demand for high calibre indirect spend specialists in the City which drove up salaries, particularly between 2003 and 2007.

We are delighted to publish the results of our recent research into The Impact of the Current Economic Climate on Procurement which raises some very interesting issues including:

Supplier strategies for dealing with increased risk

The impact on business confidence

The opportunities and challenges for procurement

The issues surrounding professional and career development

With over 100 CPO’s & Purchasing Director’s taking part and some excellent analysis we believe this is the best survey we have undertaken.

Please click here to download the Survey results.

We have created a blog page on our website www.edburydaley.com/blog which is open to everyone who wants to debate the findings and any associated issues. You can also find our previous surveys on Salaries and Career Development there.

Welcome to our blog page where we encourage discussion about our online surveys, in particular the results and the issues they raise. You can access our survey archive here.

For the Career Development survey results please click here

For the Procurement Salary Survey Analysis Report please click here

We are also happy for you to post your own discussion topics if they are relevant to the issues faced by Procurement and Supply Chain professionals.