The eye for developing procurement skills

Posted on 07. Jan, 2009 by in Blog

Before Christmas I spoke to Quentin Roach, the recently installed CPO at US pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb. We spoke at length about many things, but one of the nuggets he provided was related to his own working background.

Roach joined BMS in July 2008 from eye care specialist, Bausch & Lomb. In itself this isn’t a particularly interesting or insightful piece of information – the fascinating bit came when he told me what he did there. Although Roach was initially CPO, he was latterly its head of global sales, marketing and customer service. “One of the ideas throughout the profession is how do you take people who are in charge of chief procurement officer roles and expand their responsibilities within the corporation,” he said, expanding on this to say how the procurement profession provides many of the skills required in wider, more senior leadership roles.

Interestingly, he talks of two direct advantages of his move into sales and marketing. “It was an opportunity for me to, one, leave procurement and go into sales and marketing, but also to come back to the procurement side and bring back another set of experiences,” he said.

It provided an excellent example of a procurement executive removing himself from the immediate comfort zone. The benefits of this can be huge – in this particular scenario, however, it seems that BMS is the one which will benefit.

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