Over the past few years, I’ve observed that companies are recognizing the need for more advanced procurement activities. That’s great, obviously. But what’s interesting is the difference in how various companies assign these responsibilities to their employees.

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Some companies require their procurement employees to raise their competency levels to handle these new activities. Other companies have subdivisions of their procurement departments dedicated to activities like market assessments, supplier financial analysis, training selection, and even the cutting of purchase orders. In these subdivisions, the employees do nothing but these specialized tasks while the procurement agents are not required to have the skills to perform those tasks.

Which arrangement does your company use? What do you see as the benefits of doing it that way? Whose job is safer: the specialist or the generalist? Why?

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