607 Procurement, Purchasing, and Contracting

Unit Overview

607 Procurement, Purchasing, and Contracting is a unit within the CMI Level 7 module that focuses on the ability to acquire relevant resources for the organisation. Leaders in higher levels of management and leadership within the organisation are responsible for ensuring the right mix of resources. These resources are acquired in different approaches, with procurement and purchasing focusing on the acquisition of resources such as premises and operational resources and contracting, ensuring that the organisation acquires the right human resource for accomplishing specific goals and objectives.

Leaders must ensure that they understand the appropriate principles to implement when handling the process of procurement, purchasing, and contracting, which are designed to acquire required resources. They should ensure that they master the procurement and contracting processes as well as ensure that there is increased efficiency, reduced costs, and maximising the quality and quantity of goods and services that are acquired from the processes. It helps to ensure that leaders are able to achieve the desired leadership roles and practices within the workplace.

607 Procurement, Purchasing, and Contracting is a unit that aims at addressing the learning needs of leaders. It helps them to understand the basic principles of procurement, purchasing, and contracting within the workplace. Within the unit, the learners are guided to build the required skills and technical capability in their strategic levels of learning. It focuses on ensuring that the leaders are able to effectively fulfill the roles and responsibilities within the workplace. The unit also helps the learners to understand methods of improving efficiency within the workplace by reducing the costs of acquiring resources and maximising performance. The unit is taught in 21 hours of guided learning and contributes 6 credit values towards the completion of the CMI Level 7 module.

Suitability of the Unit

Procurement purchasing and contracting are critical practices that specific professionals are required t accomplish. These are tasks that are left for the leaders in different areas of the organisation as well as the specialists selected to oversee the process of completing purchases. It is important that these individuals tasked with overseeing such activities within the organisation understand the principles and procedures that are set up to facilitate the accomplishment of goals and objectives. It is important that they are taken through the process of training that helps them to understand these principles. 607 Procurement, Purchasing, and Contracting is, therefore, a suitable unit for the leaders and professionals required to complete the purchases, contracting, and procuring procedures in the organisations.

The unit is designed to improve the understanding of the senior managers within the organisation who are required to conduct the process of both budgeting and ensuring that its purchasing procurement and contracting strategies are aligned with the strategic goals. The unit s also suited to middle-level managers who are responsible for a specific unit of the organisation where they oversee all activities, including purchases. Purchasing professionals can also use the content within this unit to further improve their ability to expedite their duties and responsibilities within the workplace.

Learning Outcomes 

Upon completion of the unit, the earners should be able to:

• Appraise the factors which could impact the process of procurement, purchasing, and contracting within their organisations

• evaluate the relationship between strategic procurement and operational purchasing for the specific leaders within the workplace

• Evaluate the application of procurement and purchasing process in improving the ability of the leaders to achieve strategic objectives

• Develop a proposal that focuses on managing tenders and binding processes in the approaches of improving operational development

• Make recommendations on the types of contracts that can be used to meet the operational requirements within the workplace

• Propose contract amendment approaches to be implemented in the organisation and ensure that goals are achieved effectively

Key Learning Areas

The unit focuses on improving the ability of the leaders to effectively achieve the goals and objectives of the organisation. Some of the main learning areas that are covered within this unit include:

Principles of Procurement, Purchasing, and Contacting

This area of learning is critical in ensuring that the learners understand the principles that guide the processes of acquiring relevant resources within the organisation. It highlights the role of the strategic level leader in ensuring that the approaches selected are applicable in other levels of the organisation contributing towards meeting the operational requirements. The area of learning also helps to understand the application of procurement and purchasing of the process within the workforce, which ensures that the leaders are able to meet the goals and objectives that have been identified for the organisational setting.

Application of the Principles of Procurement Purchasing and Contracting

This area of learning helps the learners to understand the specific process of implementing identified principles of purchasing, procurement, and contracting. They are guided to understand different procurement and purchasing approaches that include bidding, tendering, negotiations and bargaining. The leaders are also guided to understand contractual agreements and terms such as part-time, full-time, contracts, and zero-hour contracts.

This understanding helps them to effectively handle their roles and responsibilities within the workforce and ensure that they are able to contribute towards meeting the goals and objectives of the organisation in general. Lastly, the learners are guided to effectively make decisions and recommend approaches to improve their ability to handle the procurement, purchasing, and contracting mechanisms within their areas of responsibility.

Evaluation

Upon completion of the unit, the learners are taken through the evaluation process. This proves involves completing a written assessment that tests the understanding of the theoretical concepts that have been learned within t eh unit. It also helps to understand the ability to apply this principle in the practical setting within the organisation.