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Spend versus Supply Management: The Final Word

January 10th, 2007 · by Tim Minahan · 4 Comments · supply management

Yesterday, I shared recommendations from a new Next Level Purchasing study on how supply managers can turn the current talent crunch into an opportunity for career advancement. The same study shed some light on the much-belabored debate: what is the proper term to describe the profession?

Supply Excellence readers have witnessed the lingo-wrestling Spend Matters blogmaster Jason Busch and I have performed on this subject. In fact, some of you have tapped into the rumble. (And others have not so politely asked us to throw in the towel on the whole issue.) But, when Next Level put the question to 1,200 purchasing and supply management professionals around the globe, I just couldn’t resist sharing the fact-based results.

As the below table from the report indicates, the aggregate term “Purchasing and Supply Management” topped the list of preferred names for today’s discipline — with survey respondents indicating that purchasing is apt for the more operational activities while supply management is indicative of more strategic or expert processes. On its own “supply management” was in a dead heat with “purchasing” for fourth most popular term — behind supply chain management, procurement, and strategic sourcing. Click to enlarge.

Spend v Supply Mgmt Chart.jpg

So what’s the difference between traditional purchasing and supply management? I have debated this subject adnauseum here. So, I’ll just share some of the quotes from respondents to the Next Level survey:

  • “Supply management is more strategic purchasing as in involves supplier relationship management, supplier development, spend analysis, technology implementation, etc.”
  • “[Supply management] is not the simple act of buying but also includes the contract, performance management, and relationship building that takes place afterwards.”
  • “Supply management encompasses more than purchasing but also managing your suppliers to meet your company objectives and goals.” (You can get the full report by registering for Next Level’s Free Purchasing Resources Program here.)

By comparison, “spend management” was way down the list of preferred names for the discipline, with less than 1% of respondents indicating that the term accurately reflected the depth and breadth of today’s profession.

And I’ll let that fact speak for itself.

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4 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Mike O // Jan 11, 2007 at 2:42 pm

    Fascinating uh…facts(?).
    Let’s recap…
    “The 2007 Purchasing & Supply Management Career & Skills Report”
    names “Purchasing & Supply Management” as the top name for the profession.
    What are the results from the
    “The 2007 Supply Chain Management Career & Skills Report” or
    “The 2007 Spend Management Career & Skills Report”?
    The “Final Word”?
    Reminds me more of Stephen Colbert’s “The WØRD”

  • 2 Tim Minahan // Jan 11, 2007 at 3:11 pm

    Mike “O”:

    Point taken. But other research methods have revealed the same trend:

    For one: Former ERP and Procurement Solutions Exec Dave Stephens’ Google Trends, which tracks and compares the number of times specific terms are cited in news articles, returns similar findings as the Next Level report: http://procurement.wordpress.com/2006/05/12/just-for-laughs-on-tim-and-jasons-phrase-war/

    Charles Dominick did a similar search during the heat of the Spend-vs-Supply Management War last year…but alas the link is dead. (Charles needs a search engine on his Purchasing Certification Blog.) Besides, I would guess you would claim that Charles is a biased observer based on his use of the terms purchasing and supply management. But still, 1,200 survey respondents from around globe is hard to argue with — regardless of the title of the report.

    I’m all for open debate.

  • 3 Supply Excellence » Supply versus Spend Management: Hard Savings versus Behavioral Science // May 21, 2007 at 12:30 pm

    [...] In addition to the risk management issue, the Supply Management 2.0 Forum in New York last week rekindled the old (tired?) debate on the differences between supply and spend management.  [...]

  • 4 Charles Dominick, SPSM // May 22, 2007 at 9:21 am

    BTW, the report was named based on the results that were found. If the results indicated that the most desirable term for the profession was “Procurement & Strategic Sourcing” for example, the report would have been named “The 2007 Procurement & Strategic Sourcing Career & Skills Report!”

    It would have been silly for us to name the report differently than what the profession is telling us it wants to call itself, right?

    Now I gotta go and figure out how to put a search engine into the blog.

    Until then, you can drill down into posts by category on the accompanying del.icio.us account - http://del.icio.us/purchasing_blogs

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