As we draw the curtain on 2021, Procurement and Supply Australasia (PASA) CEO Jonathan Dutton recaps on the year that was for procurement. And looking ahead to 2022, there’s a a full house of events on the agenda for PASA in what is already shaping up as a ground-breaking year.
In many ways, many people will be glad to see the end of 2021. Like most, it has been a difficult year for procurement practitioners as well. Yet procurement did well at the outset of the pandemic with stakeholders reporting greater alignment, genuine responsiveness and a real sense of urgency.
This brings a relatively new challenge for procurement in 2022 – how to capitalise on these impressions and grow the procurement opportunity well beyond cost into bringing other benefits more consistently? PASA is set to help you.
Perhaps surprisingly for a live-events business, PASA had a relatively good year, delivering highly relevant events and a wide range of activities which were well attended and well supported. This despite the extended COVID lockdown periods, which were unexpected as the year started, and undertaking our first year in 2021 without founder and Managing Director, Nigel Wardropper at the helm, who died so suddenly before our annual conference in October 2020.
Of course, PASA had already pivoted to ONLINE events during 2020, but taking full advantage of our Remo virtual conference platform in the end we were able to host seven excellent online PASA Conference events in 2021 with over 100 highly relevant speakers from top-tier firms like McKinsey, KPMG, The Hackett Group & Gartner; plus contributions from niche local consultancies & experts, plus case studies from firms like Coles, Virgin Australia, Westpac, ANZ, Mirvac and many others, with key contributions from a wide range of public sector leaders.
Although we were disappointed to have to postpone most of our live conferences until next year, 2022, the silver-lining is a bumper programme for next year, beginning with five events in four weeks in March – four of which will be live (we hope).
Also, during 2021, our PASA Connect programme went from strength to strength. We ran 72 Connect sessions this year with record attendances – at either 90 minute industry round-tables or snappy expert-led one hour online private webinars covered most key topics relevant to busy procurement teams during the year. Enterprising members also used the archive of nearly 200 recorded sessions (with slide decks) in our private website member resource centre – quite a treasure trove of immediately relevant content to support both expert or rookie procurement practitioners.
In addition, during 2021, we offered a much expanded PASA Training programme of short-courses, including not only core procurement staples, like negotiation skills, but more innovative and interesting topics. Despite Covid budget cuts amongst members, most courses ran, and ran well.
Of particular note, were the several Agile Procurement courses we ran online. The agile approach suits a much more interactive and innovative online training using Zoom Pro and Mural … and we now have an alumni group of over 170 people who have attended LAP1 with PASA since 2019.
Our new year begins after the holidays when we reopen on 10th January 2022 (the PASA office closes 17th December) to re-commence the event planning for the year in detail.
The PASA Conferences programme is released and the PASA Connect Q1 programme will be fully live by Australia Day, with 40 sessions planned in the first half, including occasional live round-tables again in 5 cities to add to our large usual Online programme.
All the best for your holiday period and for the start to the new year.
JONATHAN DUTTON FCIPS
Chief Executive Officer, PASA
