I recently came across a whitepaper called “Great Expectations” from Oracle. Well, a procurement whitepaper from Oracle didn’t exactly have my expectations high for the value of the content.

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Sometimes, when I’m reading these whitepapers, my eyes start to glaze over because the authors try to tell CPO such basic, basic stuff about the procurement process and priorities. If the reader is already a CPO, chances are that they know about bundling demand across functions and consolidating suppliers. This whitepaper began with that familiar formula, although I must say that Oracle did a good job of describing core procurement activities in perhaps the most concise manner I’ve ever seen.

But the nugget of true value that I saw in this whitepaper was the section entitled “Critical Info Requirements Explode.” This section listed out many of the key types of information that CPO’s need to make sure are available to their people, such as:

• Total spend
• Contract compliance
• Business process compliance
• Procurement effectiveness
• Procurement efficiency
• Supplier performance
• Sourcing compliance
• Competitive intelligence
• Supply base intelligence
• Supply chain intelligence

The whitepaper elaborates on what is included in each information type. I didn’t want to steal the whitepaper’s thunder by including that here, but you can download the whitepaper to read it for yourself.

Now, based on my working with procurement groups, a listing like this is welcome. Information – good information – is the key to effective strategy setting and execution. But with so many types of information available, it can be difficult to know everything you need and to plan for how you will get it. Oracle does a good job of putting most of the key information requirements in one place so a CPO can develop a more comprehensive plan on getting the information s/he needs to deliver results.

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