The chief procurement officers of Daimler, IBM, Nokia, Reed Elsevier and Shell have accepted positions on the Procurement Leaders Advisory Board, which will see them play a key role in the future development of network services.

The Advisory Board will be steered by Neil Deverill, the former CPO of Royal Philips and Anglo American. The aim of the Advisory Board is to provide an independent and robust platform which can be used to define the future direction of the Procurement Leaders Network as well as the member services it provides.

Neil Deverill, Advisory Board chairman, said, “Procurement and supply chain management in general is developing well as a discipline, but it still needs to change up a gear or two to fully realise the potential that it can provide. Until now, the impetus for improvement has tended to be patchy and sometimes fragmented, lacking a clear point of focus for knowledge and information.”

It is that focus that the Advisory Board will provide, not only for the Network but for the wider procurement profession.

John Paterson, global head of procurement at IBM, said that, currently, procurement professionals must be focused on several areas; including the role they have to play in the current economic climate, the globalisation of supply chains and of the procurement function; sustainability and supply chain security. “I joined the board to help make these topics top of mind for our industry,” he said.

But skills is another topic close to the top of his list of priorities. “I hope the board can influence academia to take a stronger look at the procurement profession and to address the needs of industry as we look to recruit and develop new talent,” said Paterson. “Procurement is exciting, it's global and it offers a lot of opportunities. But unless ‘Generation Y’ is introduced to it as an option, it's not going to get any easier to attract them.”