Have you noticed a hardening stance at boardroom level, and has the pressure focused on your procurement operation been upped noticeably over the past few months?

We’re just days into 2008, but the next 12 months already look like being some of the most difficult the procurement profession has had to navigate in recent times.

The past week has seen the price of crude oil sprint to the $100 mark for the first time in its history, and, presumably inspired, commodity prices are shooting up quicker than you can say “Happy New Year”.

Part of the reason for these seemingly inexorable rises is the ongoing weakness of the dollar and the fact that the majority of commodities are priced against it, however, whatever the reason, it seems inevitable that procurement is going to come under massive pressure to prove its value to the business during what is undoubtedly an uncertain, and potentially combustible, period.

A raft of reports on the state of businesses both in the UK and Europe, and across the pond in the US, have painted a gloomy outlook for the first half of 2008 as the credit crunch and its associated problems take their toll, but whilst silver-linings may be few and far between, procurement is presented with an ideal opportunity.

The past few years have seen the profession take on an increasingly high-profile role, and what better way to illustrate just how invaluable a well-run procurement operation can be than by performing exceptionally at a difficult time.

Procurement has long craved a higher place in the corporate agenda, and now that it has it, the time has come to justify it.

Ever feel like your working too hard? Well fear not, because latest figures released by the TUC in London, suggest that you’re far from alone.

For the past decade the UK’s working week has been getting progressively shorter, but as employers feel the pinch, it appears that the return of the 48-hour week could once again be just around the corner.

According to the TUC, more than 13 percent of the UK’s workforce (3.2 million people) put in more than 48 hours a week – a rise on the 2006 figure of 12.8 percent.

The increase comes despite the introduction of an EU directive aimed at preventing excessive working hours, although this is something workers in the UK can opt out of, leaving unions to claim, somewhat unsurprisingly, that employers are abusing the system.

However, despite the latest figures, it appears that workers in the UK still have a long way to go to catch up with their competitors on the continent. In Greece, for example, the average working week was 42.7 hours in 2006 - narrowly ahead of the Czech Republic’s 41.7, and the 40.9 hours worked by employees in Poland.

The average weekly total of 36.9 hours in the UK put them behind France (38 hours), but slightly ahead of Germany (35.4 hours). The Netherlands has the lowest average working hours in Europe – coming in at 30.8 hours.

How do these figures compare to the hours you’ve put in throughout 2007 and are these figures reflected across procurement as a whole? Let us know your views.

No company has trumpeted the benefits of offshoring as enthusiastically as Aviva, but the company’s future plans are beginning to look unclear following the resignation of Patrick Snowball, the head of the company’s UK business, and the man responsible for Aviva’s pledge to shift over 7,800 job overseas by the end of this year.

When Aviva’s plans were unveiled in September 2006, Snowball told reporters: “We only have three costs – people, technology and buildings. As you use more technology, you need fewer people and buildings.”

He referred to those who opposed their labour expansion in India as ‘luddites’ in a BBC interview, but since the plans were announced Snowball’s ambitions have been beset by problems.

As reported by ELP earlier this year, Norwich Union, who are part of the Aviva Group, moved 150 call centre jobs back to the UK following complaints from customers and despite the company’s claim these were merely a “tweaking exercise”, Snowball’s departure has further clouded the waters.

Snowball resigned after turning down another senior management job under incoming chief executive Andrew Moss – a man he had gone head-to-head with for the top position.

Unsurprisingly his departure hasn’t been mourned by the trade unions that bitterly opposes Aviva's plans. Andy Case, the national Amicus officer for Aviva said: “We believe that Patrick Snowball has been over-zealous with job cuts and has over-sold the benefits of offshoring.

“We hope his successor will renew positive employee engagement and review their offshoring strategy.''

They, and countless Aviva employees, are now waiting to see how likely this is.

America’s Wall Street and Mumbai’s Nariman Point may be miles apart in terms of location, but India’s financial capital is in danger of being overrun by some of the world’s biggest investment banks.

Unlike Wall Street’s invasion in the mid-90s, which ended abruptly following a slowdown in business and increased legislation, this particular conquest shows no sign of abating.

Accountancy firm Grant Thornton recently claimed that $39 billion worth of deals had been completed in India in the first quarter of 2007, with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Credit Suisse and Meryll Lynch just four of the big names that have benefited from the move to Mumbai.

However, in a competitive marketplace where the margins on equity deals are, according to one of ABN Amro’s leading figures in the country, Romesh Sobi, “very very thin”, none are expecting an easy ride.

The rush to do business in a city that is the home of Bollywood cinema has sent salaries soaring, and with fund managers still thin on the ground, the problem of recruitment and talent retention is likely to continue.

However, whilst Goldman Sachs chief executive in India, L. Brooks Entwhistle, admitted in a recent interview with the New York Times that the real way to make money in this part of the world at the present time is to “advise, finance and invest”, many are content to build their businesses until the large deals begin to come along.

How long this will be is hard to say, but in the meantime there will no shortage of companies casting covetous glances in Mumbai’s direction.

Looking back at the last engagement of 2006 and reflecting upon the issues that the client faced, only a brave consultant would say the solution was simple. As with all consulting engagements, there is no silver bullet solution, and the name of the game is to manage the link between complexity and human behaviour with as simple a strategy as possible to create value for the client. The interesting aspect of this particular engagement was the chance to focus specifically on the way the procurement function was managed on a day-to-day, as well as a medium and long-term strategic basis.

At any one time, a procurement function must have a core focus on two broad types of activities; project type work, such as strategic sourcing to improve price points with suppliers and recurring process type work, such as settling purchase orders for transmission to suppliers. Both of these areas demand different skills and present very different issues for the procurement director. Each of them is equally important in terms of generating value - sourcing ensures that good deals are in place with suppliers, order processing makes sure that orders are routed swiftly and accurately to the right sourced suppliers. In addition to having responsibility for projects and processes, procurement directors will be drawn into daily firefights that require precious operational, technical or political expertise to resolve. Finally, all procurement directors must be driving a long term ‘change procurement’ agenda – and this should apply regardless of how good or bad the function is. The potential risk with such a diverse in-tray is that procurement managers focus on one or two of these areas, to the exclusion of the rest, resulting in great projects, but bad ordering processes, a great order process but no savings, or lots of change and little to show for it.

So what’s the solution? The first step is to recognise that these areas exist and need to be managed by people who have the authority and responsibility to get the job done. Secondly, different profiles of people are required for each of these areas because the skills they require vary considerably - category process re-engineering and negotiating contracts are poles apart. Finally, there needs to be a vision, ideally owned by the procurement director who co-ordinates and brings together each of these four areas, understanding the dependency and relationship between them. It is the custodian of the vision who has the job of making sure that it is realised, independent of environmental conditions. Of critical importance in achieving this, is making sure that the right people are in the right place, and then letting them get on with the job, deploying any political heavy artillery as required. The other important thing to remember is that being custodian of the vision is not a passive activity; you need to be constantly challenging the status quo of your entire organisation - if you don’t have a problem to solve, go out and find one. Of course, this may mean that the vision changes, but the best plans are the ones that are changed on the first day of battle.

Much of current procurement commentary deals with sourcing strategies, technology platforms or relationship management, most of which is incredibly useful. Nonetheless, there needs to be more coverage of how procurement functions can be effectively managed – this will help raise the profile of ‘Procurement Management’ as an important topic in building a well run procurement group.

In the Economist last week (‘Manager, offshore thyself’) was the tale of offshoring a company’s HQ. Cited in the article was the example of Nokia, who have splintered its top ranks to different locations – four of the eleven senior management making their way to New York to tackle the potentials in the convergent mobile market – and presumably a few staying in native Finland . Another example came from IBM ’s chief procurement officer, John Paterson, who has moved to China – the first time a company-wide function at the firm has been based outside America .

Across at the BBC they ran the story of Halliburton’s move from Texas to Dubai – a move some say might result in the loss of power and status of the HQ – but clearly, in this case, the result of some valuable contracts won in Iraq and extensive operations located in Saudi Arabia. (Also see 'Barclays planning Dutch HQ move').

In essence, companies make these moves to be amongst the action and to help expand the business. Usually with clearly defined goals.

The Economist quotes some unnamed academics in Sweden and Britain that suggest the corporate HQ is becoming ever more mobile – “23 firms in the Fortune 500 have moved their head offices from one country to another, more than half of them in the past five years”.

So are these examples the result of the tectonic shifts a company has to make to be competitive; the movements of a minority of organisations, or is the virtual HQ now a reality?

My own opinion is we may be some way off the virtual HQ. Whilst it sounds great and in smaller companies, like ours, a virtual office can be achievable. Hiring staff, planning, administration, strategy and general dealmaking are big nuts to crack. Achieving these core ambitions and competences across larger organisations with decentralized management will be no mean feat.

But what about today’s techno-ambidextrous departments, people and resources? Well, yes, true. As we all know companies do hive off important areas of the business to offshore locations with success. But at the end of the day business is people, managers like to be near each other, bosses near investors and people need community. Competitiveness is all very well but if it leads to state of anomie in your workforce it will, in the long term, bring benefits to no one. Call me old-fashioned, but sometimes you just can’t beat speaking to someone in person.

So is offshoring the HQ even a phenomena? Well according to research, and not much of it has been done, there are indications many organisations are increasingly flexible on the location of their functions – but this isn’t really news. In relation to the HQ pulling up the foundations at the moment there’s some, but little evidence of a mass exodus. However what is evident, regardless of my flippant comments, is technology is providing the platforms for such moves to be made increasingly simple in future. For Mr. Paterson of IBM that means already you can run global operations from anywhere in the world. I have to say that’s great news if you have the infrastructure, but I might be a little less confident of some of the places I’ve visited.