Karim Bouarfa has been a consultant and director of the specialized purchasing consultancy Buy One Consulting since 2017, and has worked as a corporate executive for some thirty years. His career in purchasing began when he joined Fiat Auto Maroc’s purchasing department as direct materials purchasing manager in the 1990s. In this role, he helped develop a supplier ecosystem around the industrial assembly site. He then spent 17 years as Morocco Purchasing Director for Accor, the world’s leading hotel group. As a member of the country’s management committee, he deployed the group’s purchasing policies and processes in Morocco, and took part in cross-functional and international projects.
In September 2023, he will be defending his Executive Doctorate of Business Administration (EDBA), on the theme “”Organizing a purchasing department aligned with the desired purchasing strategy: the case of large Moroccan companies””, under the supervision of Professor Olivier Lavastre, Professor at Grenoble Alpes University.
Purchasing is now a strategic function within companies. But to be fully operational and effective, purchasing departments need to be structured and organized. However, the purchasing departments of large Moroccan companies still appear to be relatively immature, and their alignment with the desired purchasing strategy is rarely mentioned. The aim of this research is to find out how to organize a purchasing department so that it is aligned with the desired purchasing strategy. The research is presented as a roadmap for those involved in organizing purchasing departments. It puts forward managerial recommendations for each dimension of the organization, as well as a strategic tool for their deployment.
Thesis Direction
Pr Olivier Lavastre
Thesis Title
Organising a purchasing department in line with the desired purchasing strategy: the case of large Moroccan companies
Abstract
Purchasing is now a strategic function within companies. But to be fully operational and effective, purchasing departments need to be structured and organized. However, the purchasing departments of large Moroccan companies still appear to be relatively immature, and their alignment with the desired purchasing strategy is rarely discussed. The aim of our research is to find out how to organize a purchasing department so that it is aligned with the desired purchasing strategy.
Based on a review of the literature in purchasing and organization management, we propose a typology of four purchasing department organizations aligned with their purchasing strategy: (1) response to operational needs, (2) price reduction, (3) optimization of internal processes and (4) innovation.
Each organization is analyzed according to five main organizational dimensions: (1) the purchasing information system, (2) the purchasing performance measurement indicator, (3) the buyer’s skills, (4) the purchasing department’s place in the organization chart, and (5) the purchasing department’s managerial interaction mode. It should be noted that none of the organizations in our typology is better than the other, since the best organization is the one that aligns itself, with its dimensions, in a coherent way with the desired purchasing strategy.
Within the framework of hypothetico-deductive research, our typology is submitted to our research field in order to verify whether the theory’s recommendations are applied. In this context, we mobilize a qualitative method of data collection and processing, with a content analysis. Through 20 respondents (11 purchasing managers and 9 company directors), 15 purchasing departments of large Moroccan private-sector companies took part in our empirical analysis.
The results show that purchasing departments succeed in aligning their organization with their strategy, but only when dealing with less complex supplier markets. Our results also show that it is particularly difficult to align the information system and the performance measurement indicator with the strategy.
Our research is presented as a roadmap for those involved in the organization of the purchasing department. It puts forward managerial recommendations for each dimension of the organization, as well as a strategic tool for their deployment.