CPSM Blog

You will pass the CPSM - Happy New Year !

If you are reading this post - you got here because you searched the Internet and were motivated enough to do so. Wonderful- you are a supply management leader !

I am pretty sure that you have very little competition because less than 10% of the world's supply managers - that are qualified to take the CPSM- are really trying to even find out about the certification let alone try and take the exam. How do I know ? - from the statistics of this blog which is the top blog on the CPSM. 

So if you are motivated enough to investigate the CPSM - you are going to make it. Just stay with it.

Best of Luck and Happy 2010.

Supply Management Policy and Organization policy

There are five questions from this section and it covers the advantages and disadvantages of having supply management policies in the context of the organization and managing change in these policies.

If you have a policy ( say you start work on a new category buy request within 24 hours of receiving from the user) the advantage is that your users are likely to be more satisfied. The catch is that everybody in the supply team must understand the policy and execute it whole heartedly. Here the problem is of communicating that policy to the team. If you can do that well you will prevent problems with users if every buyer has a random action date on her/his buy indents. Examples of policies are Ethics (accepting gifts,meals etc.) Social Responsibility ( Diversity in Supplier base for eg.) and reciprocity policy. Reciprocity policy normally means that you  cannot decide to favor a supplier just because that supplier is also a customer because buy and sell policies normally operate independently -unless specified by management otherwise. In other words, if you are new to the organization you should know the rules, help make new better rules and help change the ineffective or outdated rules relating to supply management.

The bridge exam component of this section is about aligning the supply management policies to the organization policies. For example, if the organization has a principle of returning calls and emails within 24-48 hours for other stakeholders like customers and shareholders you need to have a similar policy for suppliers. In other words you need to align the goals of supply management to the goals of your organization.

How much time should I spend studying Task 3-A-8 ?

"Careful in spending" is the hallmark of the professional supply manager! Yet I find that CPSM candidates seem to get mixed up in "spending"  time for their study efforts.

I believe you should spend time in proportion to the number of questions that will come up from a particular section.So if you look at 3-A-8 which is about "cross-functional teams" for process improvement,international etc. you should give a lot of time to this section.

Why? because as the Study Guide 3 tells you (see page xii) this section has 8 questions compared to only 3 questions in  say Topic 3-B-2. In other words, you should be spending double (if not triple)  the time with 3-A-8 than with 3-B-2.

While taking the exam though you should have an "equal time" principle to every question - you should not be spending extra time on any question. Pace yourself during the test.

Take the CPSM Diagnostic test before the exam

I owe it to my CAPM friends who told me to take the diagnostic exam before the CPSM. At that time the CPSM diagnostic test was not ready so Bruce Caldwell (then CPM now also CPSM ) was so kind as to drop off his old copy of the CPM diagnostic test. Thanks Bruce !

Before I got hold of the CPM diagnostic I was really going through the 3 books - reading a section and putting out a blog post in this blog (at least this blog was more regular). Once I took the CPM diagnostic - I immediately got to know exam topics where I needed to strengthen my studies.

The only problem was that the CPM syllabus and approach was limited and the CPSM was more like an MBA or GRE (Advanced)/GMAT  type of test in the broader supply management domain. In any case, the CPM diagnostic kit was invaluable.

Today, even if you have spent years in supply management and have read all the material I would strongly advise you to take the CPSM diagnostic test which is now available. Take the diagnostic test exactly as per the time allowed so that you get a real feel of the exam and take it ahead of the real thing so that you have time to review stuff that you need to strengthen. Check the ISM Website for more details here.