Stakeholder Engagement for Category Management

Program Description:

Organizations are facing increased uncertainty in supply markets, and sourcing category managers need to monitor market conditions in order to build strategies that exploit opportunities and mitigate risk. When building sourcing category strategies, managers need to begin by fully understanding stakeholder needs in order to begin the process of market intelligence data collection and analysis. The Stakeholder Engagement for Category Management program provides a set of guidelines for structuring this engagement process throughout the entire category strategy development process. The program provides insights into the five key steps that managers must take in engaging stakeholders before, during, and after a category strategy is developed. Participants will identify the importance of spending time with stakeholders to understand their competitive priorities and, in teams, identify opportunities and assess them based on potential and complexity. Each team must then understand the critical questions to which stakeholders need answers and the type of information that can best help them answer these questions and make decisions. Next, the team will identify approaches for delivering the information and addressing additional questions that come up. Finally, the team must decide what information requires updating, and how often updates need to occur to be effective. The program concludes with an overview of the types of skills managers need to develop in order to work effectively with stakeholders. The faculty instructor for this program is a renowned thought leader in supply chain management and is an industry expert in category management, strategic sourcing, supply market intelligence, and supplier development. The instructor serves as a professor of supply chain management at North Carolina State University’s Poole College of Management and as an adjunct professor at the Supply Chain Management Research Group at the Manchester Business School. He is a prolific author and globally recognized leader in the field, contributing regularly to the intellectual capital of supply chain management. This customized TNI seminar gives category managers a roadmap for how to engage stakeholders before, during, and after strategy development. Skills and tactics learned at the seminar can immediately be put to use when participants return to the workplace.