ABSTRACT
There are three golden rules to delivering a memorable presentation – ¿ rstly tell ’em what you are going to tell ’em, secondly tell ’em and thirdly tell ’em again what you have just told ’em! Working along similar lines this concluding chapter must inevitably follow the third golden rule – tell ’em what you have just told ’em. However, as this book has laboured to emphasize the strategic importance of the Purchasing function, it may also be as well to attempt to crystal ball gaze the future of our profession. On this matter it was a very wise person indeed who said that the only certain predication that could be made about future change is that there would be change, and if this sounds as if I may be hedging my bets, so be it. If one looks back, our experience tends to con¿ rm this picture of the unpredictable nature of change. In my case I originally trained in the printing industry taking a shop À oor apprenticeship. My company offered every encouragement to gain quali¿ cations at the London College of Printing and as I reached the end of my apprenticeship high wages beckoned because at the time the printers, miners and steelworkers were the best paid in the country. However, I began to realize that this job was not for me because radical change was on the horizon. It was fairly obvious at the time that the stranglehold that the trade unions exerted on management, politicians and the country at large could not be allowed to continue. No one predicted that in the printing industry this would come about by Eddie Shah and Rupert Murdoch relocating the whole of Fleet Street and changing the printing processes that had been used for 150 years. At the same time some technical change was being introduced in my neck of the woods with the use of electronics for colour separations. However, I still marvel that a colour correction job that would the have taken a skilled craftsman a week to perform in my time can now be undertaken
in just a few minutes by anyone who is computer literate and has a basic knowledge of photography. Plus the quality is far superior.
