Dear reader,

CPO Forum enters its 3rd Year

"Its not the GFC we need to worry about," declared Melbourne Business School Futurist Robert Burke, "it's the GLC - Global Leadership Crisis" at a recent Faculty Roundtable meeting.

Procurement leaders are in the frontline battle to drive long term value creation, mitigate risk and broker extended networks for their organisation's future.

Registrations are already rolling in for the 3rd Annual Asia-Pacific CPO Forum, a once-a-year opportunity to connect with the most commercially astute business leaders from throughout Asia-Pacific.

Held this year at the Sebel Heritage Yarra Valley, Melbourne on Wednesday 14 and Thursday 15 April 2010, the Forum once again features an impressive line up of key-note speakers and commercial thought leaders such as: Robert Gottliebsen, Malcolm Broomhead and Michael Andrew.

Speakers will be covering the hottest commercial issues for the profession, including: values based leadership; Chindia; and implications of the carbon economy.

For more information, please contact Lisa Malone on +61 3 9654 4900.

Register Now to secure a place and save with the Early Bird special.

Join your peers at Pathways to Procurement

Transitioning into procurement can be both an exciting and a daunting challenge. There's a whole new language to learn, a sourcing cycle to decipher, negotiations tactics to apply and issues such as corporate social responsibility to understand.

Held on March 24 and 25 2010, The Faculty's Pathways to Procurement is a focused and interactive workshop customised for new recruits or professionals transitioning from other parts of the business into procurement.

"Aside from the solid commercial skills participants will develop," principal consultant and program leader, Robert Pease, says "the key strength of Pathways comes from networking and sharing experiences with others in the profession".

To register yourself or a member of your team, please contact Sandy Carveth on +61 3 9654 4900.

Michael D'Aloia hits the road

Continuing to attract procurement leaders to our consulting team, The Faculty is delighted to welcome Michael D'Aloia as Senior Consultant.

Michael joins us from CSIRO, where he held the position of Commodity Manager of Goods & Services. Michael has over 16 years of experience with BHP Billiton where, after various finance and supply roles, he was appointed as Manager of Outsourcing within Company Secretariat and Manager of Supply Excellence within Global Supply.

Michael is also a current member of CIPSA and graduated in the inaugural Procurement Executive Program class at Melbourne Business School.

In his other life, Michael is a true car enthusiast with a particular passion for his sporty mini Cooper S. Look out for Mike and his mini cruising down the Ocean Road!

Congratulations Simplot Australia

Inaugural Faculty Roundtable member, Simplot Australia, was recently awarded CIPSA Certification as commendation for excellence in Procurement Process, Practice and Policies.

"Achieving Certification has been a journey for the entire Simplot procurement team and has really highlighted to the rest of the organisation, procurement's broader commercial value proposition", says CPO Stephen Brown.

Only the fourth organisation in Australia to achieve the Certification, the recognition is just the latest in a series of success stories coming out of the Simplot procurement team. Achievements have included leading an organisational risk management review, project managing the development of bespoke supplier relationship management system (SIMSARM), from inception to implementation, and hosting a global supplier day.

Having worked with Simplot to capture and align corporate governance, risk management and procurement policies, The Faculty congratulates Stephen, project lead Nikhil Tandon and the entire team on this considerable achievement.

Mt Eliza residential centre hosts PEP 2010

School is almost in for the class of 2010. Experiential and demanding, the Procurement Executive Program (PEP) is a unique leadership course aimed at graduating transformational procurement and commercial leaders.

Conceived and developed by The Faculty Roundtable, in association with the Melbourne Business School, the inaugural PEP class of 25 participants graduated in 2008. This year, PEP is offered as an entirely residential program at the Mt Eliza residential centre to better accommodate interstate and Asia-Pacific attendees.

Presenters on the 2010 course include: Robert Burke: strategist and futurist; Richard Searle: negotiations consultant; and Jimmy Anklesaria: Founder of Anklesaria Group.

To learn more about the PEP or secure your place in the class of 2010, contact Rob Pease at The Faculty on +61 3 9654 4900 or robert.pease@thefaculty.com.au.

Learn more about best practice policy development

Over the past 18 months, The Faculty has dedicated over 1000 man hours to helping our clients develop, draft and implement procurement and commercial policies within their organisations.

With the business world operating in uncertain and ambiguous conditions, establishing sound corporate governance has become a priority for CEOs. More often than not, policies are created, but are neither aligned with the broader organisation, nor implemented effectively, resulting in high non-compliance and increased risk.

The Faculty has developed a process for developing policy involving broad stakeholder consultation, mapping the 'To Be' policy state and educating the organisation to drive both alignment of policy and buy-in.

If you are interested in participating in a policy development workshop led by our policy experts, please contact Lisa Malone on +61 3 9654 4900. or lisa.malone@thefaculty.com.au.