Procurement's No Villain! ANA Taskforce to provide mentoring

One of the presentations I caught at last year's ANA Masters of Marketing conference was from Jim Akers of Pfizer and Lisa Figel from J&J around closing the disconnect that a recent survey uncovered between marketing, procurement and agencies.

An update on this process will be provided at the upcoming Advertising Financial Management Conference, where Decideware is a major sponsor.

Although this is no surprise, the team at the ANA's Marketing Procurement Taskforce have stepped up to the plate with a new series of initiatives to bring the parties closer. It revolves around a training and communications strategy, a core element being a mentoring program where smaller organizations with a less developed marketing agency management function can learn from their more established colleagues.

For more details it is worth reading the recent AdAge article that provides a deeper look: "Task Force Out to Prove Procurement's No Villain".

We highly commend the ANA Taskforce for taking the bull by the horns and putting time and energy into closing this gap.

Too many times we've heard the dreaded analogy of "paperclip" procurement, where the focus is on pure cost reduction, at any cost, with little concern for any negstive impact on the performance of the marketing function.

However, through our involvement with the leading advertising community and their procurement colleagues we've seen how more educated and enlightened procurement executives do care about the marketer / agency relationship and they recognise its importance to the business. If this greater insight and knowledge can be more widely shared within the industry it can only lead to positive outcomes!

Author: Richard Benyon (Decideware)

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=146817