Advanced Procurement Certificate

(Re)Learn Procurement with the Latest Insights from Research and Current Best Practice.

Today, most organizations consider the management of their suppliers and supply chains as a key strategic issue that requires top management attention – and highly skilled employees that can take on the expanded responsibilities to drive value in their organizations.

Brush up your knowledge of the theoretical foundations and learn current best practices, techniques, and tools to generate value through strategic procurement and sourcing.

Course Description

During the last decades, the role of the purchasing function has shifted from a clerical support role that merely drives cost savings to a truly strategic role that drives value creation and plays on the centerstage for pressing business challenges – from tackling sustainability and de-risking supply chains all the way to managing the digital transformation and AI side of business processes.

Advanced Procurement is an intensive three-day, on-campus program that focuses on the most critical aspects of modern procurement. Created from in-depth analysis of current research and practice in purchasing and supply management, this program addresses the realities of modern procurement, as well as current hot topics.

Who Should Attend

The Advanced Procurement Certificate course is suitable for both experienced specialists and managers taking on responsibilities in procurement, but also procurement business partners involved in sourcing decisions.

Course Content Overview

Day 1: Strategy and strategic alignment

• Learn how to analyze, develop, and justify procurement strategy

• Use frameworks to diagnose strategy and capability gaps

• Analyze make-or-buy problems in a structured fashion

• Understand coordination and motivation problems in the procurement context and how to tackle them

• Design appropriate operating models and governance mechanisms

• Discuss the problem of performance trade-offs and be able to provide justifications to stakeholders

Day 2: Sourcing

• Learn how to interlock procurement strategy, category strategies, and supplier strategies

• Get to know state-of-the-art approaches to category management and optimization

• Discuss current research on supply base segmentation, buyer-supplier relationships, and interfirm governance mechanisms

• Revisit frameworks and best practices for demand and supply analysis

• How to move to demand and supply analysis to business awards

Day 3: Negotiation

• Understand healthy competition in sourcing and learn how to organize it in sourcing projects

• Learn how to use market competition in bilateral negotiations with alternatives

• Navigate the broad landscape of negotiation theory and practice

Prerequisites

• Experience in procurement, operations, logistics, marketing, supply chain, or new product development

• Good English language skills

 Credits

Certificate awarded by Mannheim Business School