Do companies need experience or certificate/diploma for procurement/purchase/import ?

i am  a cerified  purchasing professional manager (cpp-cppm) by the american purchasing society in illinois,usa.

i believe it is a needed certification.the process will take you at least a year to two years.

it is an added value in usa, but for the middle east i havn't found any employer that would appreciate this certification. 

For me , experience in procurment  overrides certificates because experienced people are aware of the pitfalls of the entire procurement process and they know the market as they know the palm of their hands. However, if experience  and certificates come together, that will be amazing.

i think we depend on company nature & percentage of purchasing.

in small company people can deal by experience & normal polices

In Biggest company we need knowledge plus training plus experience we can promote your staff to learn & take international certificate 

Frankly speaking, I have not done any certification on procurement and have been working in this field for more than six years. As general awareness, now days companies have started to ask certification on procurement as there is not academic degree widely available in this field. This field is not sophisticated as rocket science, that does not mean to undermine its importance. With involvement of latest ERP system in practice, things are becoming more structured across industry and companies would seek more and more people to go for certification to synchronize the skill set.  

Having worked in different organization, I have experienced wide difference in procurement practice accross organization as different companies have different priorities. Just wondering that how a certification would contribute to the organization when there is no standardization in work process. Unlike IT and manufacturing domain where protocal is established by industry and followed, procurement is a field where  procurement head is entrusted with responsibilty to devise the process with promise  to directly contrbuting in EBIT. 

Dear Nadir,

If you allow me, I will focus my answer only to import/export in sense of transport.  Purchasing can be done by anyone and I think that certificate for that is not neccessary, but dealing with ships, airplaines, havy trucs, all in combination with customs, deadlines, fco's, ddp's, etc - this really is not easy ...INCOTERMS is a pretty big handbook .....so - this part should be certified, although many years of experiance is pricelless in this area

Off Course companies need qualified buyer to assure scouting for qualified & reliable supplier, meeting company's quality requirnments and get items with real and best prices to assure sustain profit for the company.