Manage purchasing flows
How can you link indicators, responsibilities and decisions to manage a purchasing process from end to end?
3500 € per session, excl. VAT
In short
“Establish process management” is a private in-person session of two days for operations, purchasing and supply managers or process leads and continuous improvement managers. It helps you map a process and its critical interfaces, assign responsibilities and decision-making authority, define calculable indicators and their thresholds. Groups of up to 12 participants, in French, with exercises on your own work cases.
Why this training?
A purchasing dashboard is not enough when no one has control over the interfaces between requester, buyer and goods recipient. Deviations persist if decisions and responsibilities remain implicit. Generative AI can propose process maps, definitions and review templates. These proposals must be checked against the available data to avoid misleading indicators, invented causes and actions with no assigned owner. Running case study: Sarnove Assemblages, a fictitious organisation, experiences delays between purchase requisition and goods receipt. A fictitious dossier brings together orders, dates, incidents and roles; purchasing and the workshop disagree on the definition of a compliant delivery. Application at work: Have the process owner approve the scope, test a review using authorised data, then decide whether to continue or adjust the pilot according to the agreed criteria.
Objectives of this training
- Map a process and its critical interfaces
- Assign responsibilities and decision-making authority
- Define calculable indicators and their thresholds
- Build and then test a dashboard prototype
- Formalise a pilot protocol and its acceptance criteria
Who is it for and what are the prerequisites?
Roles and tasks concerned
- Operations, purchasing and supply managers
- Process leads and continuous improvement managers
Prior skills
- Be familiar with a purchasing or operational flow and its main incidents.
- Be able to use a generative assistant and check calculations in a spreadsheet.
What you will work on
Set the decision-making framework
Objective: Define the scope of the pilot process. Purpose, beneficiaries, inputs, outputs and boundaries.
Map the interfaces
Objective: Make breakdowns visible. Steps, waits, handovers and rework.
Organise responsibilities
Objective: Assign authority to resolve competing priorities. Process owner, contributors, decision-makers and escalation.
Select the indicators
Objective: Link measurement and decision-making. Lead times, compliance, outstanding orders; outcomes and leading signals.
Define the calculations
Objective: Make measurements reproducible. Denominators, reference dates, exclusions and frequency.
Check the data
Objective: Assess the reliability of the available data. Duplicates, missing dates and traceability.
Assemble the prototype
Objective: Visualise relevant deviations. Trends, targets and segmentation of delays.
Configure the alerts
Objective: Trigger a proportionate response. Provisional thresholds, exceptions and escalation.
Prepare the review
Objective: Structure collective decisions on competing priorities. Frequency, agenda and follow-up on commitments.
Simulate the decisions
Objective: Put the set-up to the test. Observed discrepancy, suspected cause and evidence required.
Correct and retest
Objective: Measure the quality of the prototype. Accuracy, readability and alert coverage.
Prepare the pilot
Objective: Organise a limited trial. Scope, workload, validation, termination and rollback.
What you take away
- Process charter and responsibility matrix
- Indicator dictionary and verification log
- Dashboard prototype and review template
- Pilot protocol with action register
Method and assessment
- Short instructional sessions followed by immediate practice using the continuing case study.
- Individual work followed by work in pairs, with peer review of the outputs.
- Guided group discussion: what works, what needs correcting and what remains a human decision.
- Preparation: Identify a process, its pain points and the decisions that are currently difficult. Check which tools are authorised; prepare only fictitious or anonymised examples.
Observable criteria: Critical interfaces have an owner and an escalation rule. ; Each indicator specifies its formula, source, frequency and owner. ; The prototype values are recalculated independently of the AI responses. ; Each tested alert leads to a recorded decision. ; The pilot defines the scope, acceptance criteria and stopping conditions..
Frequently asked questions
Will the system be rolled out?
No: the 14 hours, excluding breaks, produce a tested prototype and a pilot plan.
Does AI calculate the indicators?
AI can suggest the formulae; the results are checked independently in the spreadsheet.
Can you bring real orders?
Only in anonymised form, with organisational authorisation and using authorised tools.
Do all processes need to be managed?
No, the work focuses on a clearly defined purchasing flow and its priority interfaces.
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