Guest Lecture Summary MGMT 565 Ashitha Annamalai On September 29, 2015, Marc Hochman, Vice President of the AT Kearney Procurement team, presented a guest lecture on Building a Brand for Procurement. He gave us a brief talk on the future of supply chain management by 2020. The topic that interested me the most in his talk was ROSMA – Return of Supply Management Assets. Marc mentioned that AT Kearney introduced us to this ROSMA framework which is going to be a revolutionary performance measurement standard allowing procurement to quantify their financial contributions. He talked about how they created the setting. He said: “Working with CPOs and CFOs of large multinational companies, AT Kearney has identified 7 factors needed for procurement managers to continually measure procurement performance and, using accepted financial frameworks, created the framework ROSMA. » When you look at how procurement works in the business world, it's easy to see why so many companies take advantage of it. I believe that a good sourcing operation can help any company improve their product, save money and be more competitive. Basically, when it's done right, the supply can be really, really good. But in the business world, the word “GOOD” is quite ambiguous. I mean, how can a company know how good its procurement operations actually are? Or what value does it add to its activity? They say GOOD is not a language that executives, especially CFOs, typically speak. When CFOs communicate with each other, they talk in terms of metrics. Think about it...on all those quarterly analyst calls, you hear all sorts of things about cash flow estimates, earnings per share, yield of... middle of paper... your performance in quantifiable terms. I believe that with this concrete, specific metric for procurement, companies can streamline ROI, benchmark performance, and communicate in language their C-level peers can understand. And when you take a closer look at their overall solution, you really get more than just the math. They claim that by organizing the important elements of an operation, you will be able to set and track annual goals, giving your leaders better visibility into what needs to be accomplished, what their level of engagement should be and how they can add value. It also gives the opportunity to compare performance with other companies and sectors. I believe that ultimately, with AT Kearney's PPM solution and ROSMA, it has never been easier to manage, track and, most importantly, measure procurement operations. Hats off to their efforts!