In an article, I saw a big purchasing coffee with many years of purchasing experience in an interview with the company host: in the company, supply chain practitioners are in a relatively weak position relative to the market and sales departments, how can they become the protagonists and managers who formulate the company's strategic direction?

Big coffee suggests improving its comprehensive strength from both soft skills and hard skills.

Hard skills: have a professional procurement knowledge system, such as cost driver analysis, supplier management, cost control, standard cost model, professional negotiation, etc. There are CPSM and CIPS in Europe and America, and there are many in China. Therefore, we should be good at using procurement tools. When e-procurement is underdeveloped, it is offline, so many enterprises have some unhealthy phenomena. With the development of science and technology, many procurement tools have also realized electronic procurement, combining online and offline procurement, improving the procurement knowledge system, achieving the business objectives of enterprises, and avoiding the occurrence of unhealthy phenomena and realizing the "sunshine" procurement of enterprises.

Soft skills: refers to the management of requirements and the creation of new requirements, and the rapid realization of business objectives through the promotion of soft skills. Purchasing is actually sales. Purchasing should face internal customers and external suppliers with the attitude of Party B. Internal purchasing introduces technical solutions and business solutions to internal customers on behalf of suppliers, so that internal customers can understand and accept solutions, which requires high soft skills. Foreign procurement represents the company to introduce the company to suppliers well, so that suppliers can regard the company as an important customer, so that procurement can obtain good business transaction conditions. Therefore, purchasing is sales, so we should look at the problem from Party B's point of view ... Besides managing demand, we also need to create demand. Now is an innovative society. Only by creating demand and managing demand well can we become managers who formulate company strategies, lead the company's development and reach the peak of their careers.

There are two paths to career development: expert path and management path.

Experts should be proficient in purchasing goods management, know the upstream and downstream of purchasing goods, what are the driving factors of materials and costs, and where is the direction of innovation.

Management is a comprehensive manager, not necessarily proficient in everything, with high comprehensive quality requirements. It should have the management of purchasing personnel, purchasing managers and purchasing specialists, horizontal and vertical communication within the company, innovation and management of purchasing processes, and innovation and application of purchasing tools. Only by combining hard and soft can we become the backbone of the company and have a high-end dialogue with various departments or external customers. As the strong backing of the company's top management, you can provide strong support for the company's business activities and lead the procurement supply chain to a more professional and innovative road.