We see purchasing training as one of the key levers for organizational transformation.
For over 20 years, we have been committed to ensuring the sustainability and skills development of your teams and managers, through in-company group training and individual coaching.
This is a way of supporting the maturity of your purchasing function and the implementation of your transformation plan, while at the same time offering a certification program for your employees.
Skills management: a key challenge for the company
Every company has a wealth of talent, knowledge and experience that it strives to manage. We need to develop these assets and ensure their continuity, through training programs tailored to the company and each employee.
Our strategy consulting firm is a certified training organization, and has been Qualiopi certified since 2020. We deliver training programs for purchasing teams and business teams. Depending on our customers’ needs, these courses can be delivered either face-to-face or remotely, and can lead to certification or even a diploma.
Our purchasing training offer is based on learning methods that are systematically adapted to the organization concerned, its level of maturity and the targeted skills.
Key figures
- Qualiopi-certified training organization since 2020
- CIPS and KEDGE diploma and certificate courses
- 82.97% learner satisfaction in 2022
Our skills development and sustainability offer
As a professional training organization specializing in the purchasing function, we offer a range of courses for all your employees, from project buyers to purchasing managers, right through to business managers.
- Purchasing academies
- Structuring and coordinating purchasing skills development plans (certification and/or diploma programs)
- Advanced expertise
- Development and management of expert programs (advanced techniques or business applications) for buyers and managers.
- Executive coaching
- Support for new managers or top executives as they take up their responsibilities
- Action training
- Setting up training programs followed by support in implementation
Our purchasing programs meet the educational objectives established with the customer, depending on the target audience, and systematically offer a certification or diploma program, enabling the qualified buyer to capitalize on the acquisition of new skills.
Our purchasing training offer
We offer training courses tailored to the needs of each customer, with tailor-made, customer-specific courses in the private or public sector, while guaranteeing low design costs. Our training courses are offered exclusively on an in-company basis, i.e. for employees of the same organization.
Our workshops and exercises are tailored to the specific challenges of each customer, and to the use of analysis tools and processes specific to your company’s sector. Our content is adapted to both distance and face-to-face learning, in order to take into account the specific needs and constraints of each customer, and to ensure a coherent learning path for each participant.
The content of our purchasing training courses is up-to-date and focused on the new issues and challenges of today and tomorrow: sustainable purchasing, carbon neutrality, CSR impact, development of economic sectors, advanced strategy.
We guarantee “learning impact” by ensuring the acquisition of skills through end-of-training projects, learning back, coaching modules, and degree or certification programs.
Our expertise for over 20 years
For over 20 years as a training organization within our consulting firm, we have built a pedagogical architecture adapted to our customers’ challenges and organizations:
- In-company programs in face-to-face, distance or blended formats
- Innovative modules to complement off-the-shelf content
- Global (worldwide) and regional academies
- Deployment in several languages (French, English, Mandarin, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc.)
- Pre-and post-training skills assessment systems.
Why choose in-company procurement training?
In-company purchasing training enables employees to gain a better understanding of the new challenges facing the purchasing profession, and to acquire advanced purchasing skills in analysis, negotiation and supplier relationship management. It is essential for developing your buyers’ skills and improving their performance.
Indeed, with the geographical distance and logistical complexity inherent in large groups, it is crucial to train buyers in-house to guarantee a solid level of fundamental skills. The aim is for a buyer in a given department to be able to effectively manage the procurement and supplier relationship management processes.
It’s also a good way of enhancing the purchasing skills of your employees, and of offering career development opportunities to a given employee who may wish to change jobs within your organization.
In-company training can take place face-to-face at the Paris training center or at another location in France or abroad, or even remotely via videoconferencing.
New areas of buyer expertise
Sustainability
- Implement a carbon-neutral purchasing strategy
- Accompany the transformation on the environmental emergency
- Develop circular economy strategies
- Analyze and manage the maturity of suppliers
Ecosystems
- Build and lead partnerships and cooperative ventures with your ecosystem
- Structure your ecosystem and develop your sectors
- Develop new business models (pay-per-use)
Cooperation
- Cooperation and co-development of products and services
- Collaborative innovation within a department or between different professions
- Intelligent relations between different professions, buyers and management
Value chains
- Rethinking geo-sourcing in France or according to international sourcing location
- Secure your supply chain and logistics
Performance
- Applying advanced levers to create value differently
- Performance calculation processes and systems
- Supplier performance management
What methodological approach is needed to build a relevant training program?
In order to meet the challenges facing the purchasing function and sales teams, it is necessary to offer a coherent, structuring approach. To this end, we offer tailor-made training courses in purchasing, positioning strategy and sales development in France, Europe, America and Asia. We provide individual support for each learner throughout the course, and measure and value the knowledge acquired.
We have developed an innovative approach and a specific methodology, identifying the 6 key stages in skills development:
- Analysis of the organization’s purchasing maturity level and individual assessment of buyers’ skills
- Definition of skills required in conjunction with the customer
- Choice of training topics related to purchasing and supplier relations
- Selection of the most appropriate learning method: e-learning, face-to-face training, individual coaching, etc.
- Construction of purchasing training programs, based on the firm’s own methodological material and with content tailored to the customer’s needs.
- Assessment of learning outcomes according to individual and overall objectives
Tailored to target audience and business objectives
We also adapt learning methods to the target population, the level of maturity of the purchasing function and the skills required of the buyer, ranging from e-learning to face-to-face training and individualized coaching.
We take care to immerse ourselves in the customer’s culture and adopt all the codes so that by the end of the professional purchasing training program, learners feel that our trainers are part of their company. Our trainers adopt a “peer-to-peer” approach with the buyer, and make their interventions as participative and fun as possible. The aim is to bring out the winning attitudes in the graduating group, and to adopt best purchasing practices from both the private and public sectors.
Case study: setting up a purchasing academy for the Seb Group
By.O Group has designed a purchasing academy for the Seb Group, which trains 150 people each year in the fields of supply chain and purchasing. The program is offered worldwide and in three languages: French, English and Mandarin, depending on the group’s locations.
There are three components to this specific curriculum, depending on the target population: a module on purchasing fundamentals for managers, a module reserved for category buyers, and a module on monitoring and managing supplier performance and quality.
“This purchasing academy enables everyone to improve their skills. When a company decides to build a training program in the form of an academy, it’s a real lever for transforming an organization.” Hervé Montaigu, Groupe SEB Vice President Sourcing.
Several key benefits were highlighted by participants:
- Qualifying training thanks to methods and tools to be used in the graduate buyer’s day-to-day work.
- Sharing of experience and case studies that encourage the learning process
- The development of an internal network dynamic and a sense of belonging within the SEB Group.
- Interest from young candidates, both internal and external, which is not insignificant in today’s tight market.
How it works and how it is managed
- As a consulting firm and purchasing training organization, we offer exclusively in-company training programs. This means that we approach the company directly as the employer, in order to train a group of salaried buyers, either face-to-face or remotely.
- We do not train post-baccalaureate or sandwich course students, and we do not accept requests for training via the CPF (Compte Personnel de Formation) of an individual employee. Under no circumstances can an employer require an employee to finance the costs of his or her training using the employee’s CPF. The employee’s opinion is required, and his or her refusal to make his or her training eligible for funding via his or her CPF does not constitute a fault.
- Our offer is, however, eligible for funding by the OPCO responsible for your company in Paris or elsewhere, enabling recognition of the professional training offered by the employer as part of your employees’ skills development.
- The logistics and certification procedures are negotiated with the employer, and the qualified employee does not have to finance the validation of his or her skills.
Case study: training ministerial buyers from the French State Purchasing Department (DAE)
Public purchasers are increasingly called upon to help with the early stages of strategic projects. Their contribution goes beyond simply complying with the public procurement code. Today, they are a real vector of value for an entire department and for the organization as a whole. The need for skills, knowledge of analysis tools and methods, negotiation and sales reflexes, and cost optimization is just as great as in the private sector.
Since By.O Group set up its purchasing training program with the French State Purchasing Department, nearly 500 public-sector buyers have been trained. Participants come from all ministries, as well as from decentralized departments and public establishments. This purchasing program is carried out in collaboration with CIPS, and leads to certification recognizing the acquisition of skills by the public purchaser.
Purchasing training courses are held face-to-face in France, alternating between Paris and the regions, including the French overseas departments, depending on the desired logistics and in order to reach all territories. The program consists of a 5-day purchasing training course, at the end of which a multiple-choice test and a case study are used to validate the knowledge acquired, and to award CIPS certification to the public purchasers trained. We systematically seek feedback from graduates on the quality of the training they have received, in order to continually improve our offer and methodology.