Three Key Skills This Procurement Leader Thinks Everyone Should Have

Even into her third year as Chief Procurement Officer (CPO) for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Jenny Doherty hasn’t stopped doing what she loves: bringing private sector best practices into government. Whether its saving money through innovative practices like reverse auctions or streamlining the best value process using lean principles, Jenny Doherty is part of a growing contingent of procurement leaders who are seizing their opportunity to transform public sector buying. 
Doherty joined Raj Sharma, Chairman and CEO of Public Spend Forum, for her turn on the mic in this week’s Procurement Leader Podcast. Managing a $3 billion spend and leading over 70 procurement professionals, she shared perspectives and thoughts on procurement leadership from her professional career. When she took the CPO job three years ago, her top priority was to save money by improving the procurement process, which she did by bringing online reverse auctions back to the keystone state. Now with 42 reverse auctions online, she is shifting her focus to changing the way Pennsylvania’s buyers award contracts, from a lowest price technically acceptable orientation to one of making best value tradeoffs. 
This has been no easy task. “Philosophically, our customers have the sense that best value procurement takes too long,” which she acknowledges is a legitimate concern in some cases. But Doherty believes that “as we do more RFXs, the time frame will cut down significantly,” and the only way to save time is to identify hurdles and attack them through lean principles. She shares several tips for other leaders looking to eliminate some of the bureaucracy that both buyers and suppliers experience in the procurement process using lean management techniques in this episode, as well as a recent blog post on LinkedIn. 
We look forward to watching how Jenny Doherty continues to blaze new trails in public procurement and are particularly excited to learn more about her experiences with lean principles such as 5S, A3, and Visual Management. Keep an eye out for future Public Spend Forum events, as we have some neat plans for this topic in the hopper, and listen to the episode to learn those three skills Jenny thinks all procurement professionals need to be successful!