Purchasing Manager Plan, direct, or coordinate the activities of buyers, purchasing officers, and related workers involved in purchasing materials, products, and services. Includes wholesale or retail trade merchandising managers and procurement managers.
Purchasing Manager is Also Know as
In different settings, Purchasing Manager is titled as
- Category Purchasing Manager
- Commodity Manager
- Materials Director
- Materials Manager
- Procurement Director
- Procurement Manager
- Purchasing Director
- Purchasing Manager
- Purchasing Supervisor
- Strategic Sourcing Director
Education and Training of Purchasing Manager
Purchasing Manager is categorized in Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Purchasing Manager
A considerable amount of work-related skill, knowledge, or experience is needed for these occupations. For example, an accountant must complete four years of college and work for several years in accounting to be considered qualified.
Education Required for Purchasing Manager
Most of these occupations require a four-year bachelor's degree, but some do not.
Degrees Related to Purchasing Manager
- Bachelor in Purchasing, Procurement/Acquisitions and Contracts
- Associate Degree Courses in Purchasing, Procurement/Acquisitions and Contracts
- Masters Degree Courses in Purchasing, Procurement/Acquisitions and Contracts
Training Required for Purchasing Manager
Employees in these occupations usually need several years of work-related experience, on-the-job training, and/or vocational training.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Purchasing Manager in different industries are
- Purchasing Agents, Except Wholesale, Retail, and Farm Products
- Procurement Clerks
- Wholesale and Retail Buyers, Except Farm Products
- Logistics Analysts
- Logisticians
- Sales Managers
- Supply Chain Managers
- Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers
- Production, Planning, and Expediting Clerks
- Marketing Managers
- General and Operations Managers
- Industrial Production Managers
- Buyers and Purchasing Agents, Farm Products
- First-Line Supervisors of Non-Retail Sales Workers
- Management Analysts
- Sales Representatives of Services, Except Advertising, Insurance, Financial Services, and Travel
- Administrative Services Managers
- Logistics Engineers
- Order Clerks
- Project Management Specialists
What Do Purchasing Manager do?
- Maintain records of goods ordered and received.
- Locate vendors of materials, equipment or supplies, and interview them to determine product availability and terms of sales.
- Prepare and process requisitions and purchase orders for supplies and equipment.
- Control purchasing department budgets.
- Interview and hire staff, and oversee staff training.
- Review purchase order claims and contracts for conformance to company policy.
- Analyze market and delivery systems to assess present and future material availability.
- Develop and implement purchasing and contract management instructions, policies, and procedures.
- Participate in the development of specifications for equipment, products, or substitute materials.
- Resolve vendor or contractor grievances and claims against suppliers.
- Represent companies in negotiating contracts and formulating policies with suppliers.
- Review, evaluate, and approve specifications for issuing and awarding bids.
- Direct and coordinate activities of personnel engaged in buying, selling, and distributing materials, equipment, machinery, and supplies.
- Prepare bid awards requiring board approval.
- Prepare reports regarding market conditions and merchandise costs.
- Administer online purchasing systems.
- Arrange for disposal of surplus materials.
- Develop cost reduction strategies and savings plans.
Qualities of Good Purchasing Manager
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
Tools Used by Purchasing Manager
- 10-key calculators
- Desktop computers
- Personal computers
Technology Skills required for Purchasing Manager
- Automated purchase order software
- Bottomline Technologies Bottomline Sprinter Purchasing Manager
- Bowen & Groves M1 ERP
- Corel Paradox
- Database software
- Enterprise resource planning ERP software
- Epicor Vantage ERP
- IBM Lotus Notes
- Infor Lawson Supply Chain Management
- Inventory management software
- Materials requirement planning MRP software
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Dynamics
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft Office software
- Microsoft Outlook
- Microsoft PowerPoint
- Microsoft Project
- Microsoft SharePoint
- Microsoft Visio
- Microsoft Word
- NetSuite ERP
- Oracle Database
- Oracle JD Edwards EnterpriseOne
- Oracle PeopleSoft
- Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management Solutions
- Oracle PeopleSoft Financials
- Oracle Primavera P6 Enterprise Portfolio Project Management
- Point of sale POS software
- Purchasing software
- PurchasingNet eProcurement
- Qlik Tech QlikView
- SAP Ariba
- SAP BusinessObjects Crystal Reports
- SAP software
- Scheduling software
- Web browser software