Procurement at a Crossroads Career-Impacting Insights into a Rapidly Changing Industry

Foreword by David Clevenger, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Organizational Development at Corporate United, and six-time honoree of the Inc. 5000. The procurement profession is at a major crossroads. Practitioners are responding to pressure from executive leadership to become more strategic, in some cases eliminating tactical work through outsourcing or automation. At the same time, performance metrics emphasize the need to continue negotiating savings and managing supplier performance. Procurement at a Crossroads: Career-Impacting Insights into a Rapidly Changing Industry aids practitioners in developing a vision for their medium- and long-term career goals, and shows them how to balance the need to become more strategic while out-performing tactical expectations.

As the Editor and lead writer for the PI Social Media Network's Procurement Insights Blog, Jon Hansen has written close to 2,500 articles and papers, as well as five books on subjects as diverse as supply chain practice, public sector policy, emerging business trends, and social media. Besides being a sought-after speaker internationally, Jon is also the host of the highly acclaimed PI Window on The World Show on Blog Talk Radio, which recently aired its 900th episode. In August 2013, out of a group of 15,000, Blog Talk Radio named Jon Hansen as one of their top 300 hosts. Kelly Barner is the Editor of Buyers Meeting Point, an online resource for procurement and purchasing professionals, and has over a decade of experience working in procurement and supply chain as a practitioner, consultant, and writer.Ms. Barner is a regular guest contributor to a number of industry blogs and publications. Since 2011 she has delivered a weekly procurement podcast that covers the coming week's events and a guest sound bite with editorial commentary. Ms. Barner has an MBA from Babson College, an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College, and a BA in English and History from Clark University. In 2014, she co-authored the book, Supply Market Intelligence for Procurement Professionals: Research, Process, and Resources.