We welcome another guest post from Philip Briscoe, Vice President, Global Procurement & Travel Operations at Equifax, Inc.

As the leader of my Procurement/Sourcing organization, one of my strategic growth playbook objectives is to continue to drive maturity of our organization, leveraging best practices and striving for best in class status in the areas of Procurement/Sourcing that our company deems to be important.

We focus the maturation process on four foundational pillars – People, Process, Technology, & Suppliers. Through lessons learned and other experiences, I have found that organizational maturation can be more easily reached and then sustained when People & Process are the initial focus for improvement. When you get the right people aligned with the right processes, you can create both short term and long term value for the company, with or without Technology.

Once you have the right people and the right processes in place, it is only then when Technology further enables your organization to drive greater efficiencies and push you over the top in terms of becoming a Best-In-Class organization. Not having the right people/skills in place along with leveraging poor processes with new technology becomes a futile attempt at maturing, and in my experience, only leads to delays in the maturation process of a Procurement organization.

Although all organizations are different, the one constant with all of them is that great organizations are managed/led/supported by great resources. Without the right people, the right processes will not be identified, thus making the technology investments made by that organization only partially optimized. If Procurement leadership can get the People & Process pillars correct, they are well on their way to becoming a successful Procurement/Sourcing organization.