Find out from 10 residents of your locality to get information about which type of organisation
they serve and categorise them in private sector and public sector.
Answers
“Private sector are more flexible and open to innovations; they are profit and people driven. Public sector is highly regulated and sometime can be seen as inflexible.”
“Procurement in the public sector (local government) is mechanically driven to meet procedures/regulations and often interfered with politically. Risk of challenge is not seen as a serious concern.”
“Because of the Public Contracts Regulations most of the public sector is too risk averse to procure effectively”
“One significant difference is that the public sector seems frightened to talk to suppliers, relying too much on the use of formal processes & arms length negotiations.”
“Public sector procurement is too rules based (for very understandable reasons) to allow for much innovative procurement and to take advantage of shifts in the market.”
Others believe one of the main differences lies within the skills of each sector.
“The profession is under skilled and complacent. We need to recruit young professionals with university degrees, give them massive drinks from firehoses in training, and manage their careers with balanced assignments in numerous ‘Specialties’.”
“The general perception is if you work in the public sector you are lazy with poor skills and wouldn't last five minutes in the private sector where the real work gets done.”
“For all the grandstanding announcements of this government's focus on driving up standards the standard of basic skills has deteriorated over the few years, an issue that is not truly addressed”
“The standard of central government procurement delivery skills is lower than any time I can remember over the past 25 years”
“Whilst the private sector inevitably has more commercial focus, the public sector often underestimates its own skills, particularly given the very different legislative environment that we work within.“
Some believe this is down to lack of communication and leadership skills.
“Procurement lacks leaderships skills and teeth, is too easily told what to do and does not have sufficient support at Exec Director level. In the commercial sector you have the full range of capability from well run, well resourced, appropriately governed procurement units running efficiently and effectively whilst maintaining a suitably risk controlled environment.”
“My department (Public sector) is so huge that communication from senior levels often seems diluted or ineffective and doesn't drive performance or change among the staff delivering procurement.”
Others believe it’s down to the Public sector having to take much more into account when going through the procurement process.
“Public sector procurers have to put up with more - adverse headlines,constant government interference, competing priorities (aggregation for savings v disaggregation for SME involvement), more legal uncertainty, the constant pressure of challenges etc.”
“Public sector procurement has to juggle so many more objectives, outcomes and stakeholders than the private sector than just looking to provide an improved service or margin. It is also still seen as a functional service and therefore under-resourced and not seen as a key player in delivering corporate objectives”
“Propriety, transparency and compliance place greater demands on public sector people and processes.”
Moving away from the more popular opinions, a few of our survey participants made some interesting opinions about what differences they think lie between the private and public sectors in procurement, including:
“The profession must be larger: Acquisition. Not just purchasing or procurement. CIPS must move up the food chain and produce acquisition professionals who can operate equally well in public or private sector. They really are not that different.”
“The differences are always down to the quality of procurement leadership and the level of top level support the function attracts”
“My concern is that we are experiencing too much central control at the moment and this could leave a a pool of talent on the fringes being neglected and and forgotten.”
“Biggest difference I have seen to date has been the value the organisations place on procurement - public sector pretty much still sees procurement as a means to place orders and have goods delivered - they do not understand the potential value add at this time and look to procurement to just make baseline savings”
What do you think are the differences, if any, between procurement in the private and public sectors? We’d love to hear your opinions!
The 10 residents of our locality and the organisations in which these people serve are :
1. Private sector : Those who serve in private sector are :
a. Mr. Chaman Sharma works as a doctor in Max Hospital.
b. Mr. Rohit Gulhati works as bank manager in Yes Bank.
c. Mrs. Rai works a teacher in Delhi Public School.
d. Mr. Devanad works as Human Resource Manager in Reliance Telecom.
e. Mr. Sajid works as engineer in Ramky Infrastructure.
2. Public Sector : Those who work in public sector include :
a. Harpal Singh works as PO in SBI bank.
b. Rahul Sharma works as doctor in AIMS, New Delhi.
c. Vijay Singh works as an Assistant professor in Delhi University.
d. Raman Singh works as clerk in Post Office.
e. Vijay Rao works as Sub-Inspector in Police.