Riportiamo l’articolo che verrà pubblicato su The Procurement Magazine “Digitalizzazione e assetti organizzativi. La funzione acquisti di oggi e domani”, n. 1/2021.
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Karsten Machholz
Professor for Supply Chain Management
& Strategic Procurement at University of
Applied Sciences Würzburg, Schweinfurt
Iain Campbell McKenna
Managing Director, Sourcing Solved
Linkedin profile (here)
Given the multiple and demanding tasks that CPOs perform daily, it would be understandable if we are occasionally mistaken for being superheroes. However, and like the team of Avengers, where would a CPO superhero be without their team?
Because a CPO is dependent on their people, in the emerging digital age, one of the main focuses should be on helping our teams develop the necessary skills to empower the technology that is redefining their jobs and our profession and industry as a whole. In other words, we must not get lost in the exciting promise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) but embrace the power of our humanness to realise technology’s promise fully.
The Power of Our Humanity
As human being’s, we’ve been developing and tuning our human skills for 195,000 years, meaning that no matter how advanced AI may be, it is still quite a learning curve on which to catch up.
It would even be reasonable to suggest that AI will never possess the one real superpower – our humanity, given all the time in the world. Because we can cultivate a unique set of skills through our life experience, we can see beyond the output of technology to better discern its importance and impact on our objectives. It is this latter point that makes us irreplaceable to any business. In this context, our role as CPO is to ensure that our teams are prepared for the coming digital age from the standpoint of leveraging technology versus being replaced by it.