75-80% fall into procurement by accident

According to Hotelier Middle East’s Hospitality Procurement Report 2016, procurement skills among professionals in the region are largely “outdated”. The report is available in full here.

One of the experts interviewed in the Hospitality Procurement Report 2016 is Dogus Restaurant Entertainment and Management (D.ream) director of purchasing Brendan Johnston. Inside the report, Johnston states that most junior and mid-level procurement professionals (75-80% he estimates) “land in their seat by accident.”

Following on from this, he argues, the majority of procurement professionals in the Middle East are given training in administrational and transactional aspects of the role, and "not much else.” 

The issue of skills and training in procurement was also raised during the Hotelier Middle East Procurement Summit, held in November 2015. Here, several procurement experts suggested that procurement needed the same investment in skills to make it a veritable profession as other departments have benefited from, such as finance, marketing and HR.

During the conference, ADR Middle East MD Abdelghani Sinan highlighted the potential of the next generation of procurement professionals through training, giving the example of a number of new university courses that now focus on procurement skills.

“There is definitely a demand in the market that compels universities to offer these programmes,” Sinan said. “Procurement should be seen as important, as critical and as a contributor to increasing shareholder value as much as finance.”

The Hospitality Procurement Report’s findings show that currently, just over half of companies in the Middle East invest in training for their procurement teams.

The majority of surveyed respondents who stated their business had invested in procurement training, also revealed that the main area of focus is currently negotiations skills, with other necessary skills considered secondary.

Click here to access Hotelier Middle East’s Hospitality Procurement Report 2016 in full.