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Supply Management Academy

Practical, Real-World Application. Cohesive. A Global Faculty. Tailored to Your Organization’s Needs.

The Vantage Supply Management Academy is designed to enable your organization's supply management team to be more effective — and deliver competitive advantage to their organizations. We apply Vantage best practices and frameworks tailored to each client. We continually assess learning and measure business impact.

Just-in-time microlearning weaves professional development into participants' busy schedules. Instead of taking executives away from their work to learn, Vantage's Supply Management Academy helps them immediately apply strategies and skills to accomplish their work in new and innovative ways.

Framework for Defining Future Competencies

Illustrative Supply Management Academy Curriculum

No two organizations are the same — their supply management training shouldn't be either. Starting with the same principles and philosophy, the Supply Management Academy is then tailored specifically to your needs.

  • Conducting a category market analysis
  • Building effective category strategies
  • The strategic sourcing process
  • Category strategy and sourcing
  • Strategy value levers
  • Analyzing total cost of ownership
  • Minimizing supply chain risk
  • Strategic versus tactical negotiations
  • The seven element negotiation framework
  • Systematic negotiation preparation
  • Diagnosing negotiation dynamics
  • Collaborative value creation
  • Negotiation strategy development
  • Understanding suppliers: The supplier profile tool
  • Supplier segmentation
  • Supplier relationship governance best practices
  • Measuring and managing supplier performance
  • Joint business planning
  • Early supplier engagement and innovation
  • Building trusted advisor relationships
  • Communicating effectively in the
    face of different views
  • Stakeholder and influence mapping
  • Overcoming stakeholder resistance
  • Multiparty engagement and alignment
  • Strategy development lifecycle framework
  • Big Picture Thinking
  • Extended supply chain mapping
  • Systems mapping
  • A systematic approach to making decisions
  • The backcasting method for action planning
  • Data acquisition, curation, and scrubbing
  • Hypothesis-driven data interrogation
  • Working with proxy data and incomplete data sets
  • Advanced visualization techniques
  • Overcoming cognitive biases
  • The art and science of storytelling

How Our Academy Helps You Unlock Supply Management Value

Leading companies realize, on average, 63% more of the value they target through strategic sourcing. They equip their people to think and act more strategically, to collaborate more effectively with internal business partners, and to more successfully negotiate and manage relationships with suppliers. 

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Global Learning. Local Instructors.

Wherever your people need to learn, Vantage training teams are there, ready to deliver.

20 languages

50+ countries

19,000+ people trained annually

Targeted Outcomes. Tailored Learning Journeys. A Tiered Training Approach.

Vantage’s training approach begins with your business goals. We test proficiency against targeted competencies, identify your people’s learning needs, then integrate training modules into learning journeys that address those needs. Vantage’s Supply Management Academy includes options that enable participants to pass certification exams from professional associations, including CIPS and ISM.

Tiered Training Approach

Groundbreaking Research. Cutting-Edge Pedagogy. Decades of Supply Management Practice.

Articles by Vantage executives regularly appear in Harvard Business Review, Supply Chain Management Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and California Management Review, among other leading journals. Groundbreaking Vantage research includes our landmark SRM and Supply Management Benchmarking and Customer-Supplier Negotiation studies.

Feedback From Our Participants

I was impressed with the delivery given this is our first virtual class involving people from multiple countries. Prep work before class began was very helpful. The breakouts were good, short but that drove intensity. Never a boring second in the training. I wish we could have more time.

— Category Manager, APAC, Semiconductor Company following first program in a multi-month leadership development program

Incredibly useful meta instruction, coupled with tangible models and strategies.

— Sourcing Manager, North America, Manufacturing company

Trainers have a deep procurement background and experiences. Their sharing is really beneficial.

— Category Manager, North America High Tech company

Most helpful were the concepts which the instructors tie back to real world experience. Seeing a practical application helps solidify the lesson.

— Procurement Manager, North America, Life Sciences company

The course offered an interesting perspective that’s different from traditional procurement training materials.

— Participant in global procurement academy for Fortune 500 semiconductor company

The Vantage training team is spectacular in their presentation styles, and I enjoy the humor and personal anecdotes they weave into the training sessions.

— Global sourcing executive, Fortune 500 technology company

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