11 hours agoHow Can Procurement Attract and Retain Talent?I often remark that “nobody grows up wanting to be in procurement.” Maybe somebody out there did. I have not met them yet. When children are in school, they dream of more glamorous occupations: professional athlete, entertainer, politician, and now, influencer. Of course, not everyone is suited to be these…Procurement5 min readProcurement5 min read
Nov 17Reference Checks Reign Supreme in Vendor Risk ManagementThere has been an explosion in services that seek to help buyers vet suppliers. These services take unstructured data from a variety of sources online and develop a structured set of data, specific to an individual vendor. …Procurement5 min readProcurement5 min read
Nov 15What Important Procurement Truth Do Very Few People Agree With You On?Peter Thiel wrote the book on entrepreneurship: Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future, In it, he talks about the principles that he believes work well for people looking to solve problems. For him, there is one question that can help him understand the potential…Procurement7 min readProcurement7 min read
Nov 6Augmented Procurement RealityEnterprise Resource Planning (or “ERP”) systems are core to the way organizations do business today. Think of them as a general ledger for all kinds of workflow, or as the definitive source of truth for various processes and transactions. This does not mean that they are easy to use. ERP…Procurement5 min readProcurement5 min read
Oct 29Good Procurement Practices Massively Lower CostsInternal discussions about procurement tend to focus on cost above all else. The procurement department exists to beat down suppliers and ensure that they get the best price or to enforce policies and procedures intended to curb waste, fraud, and abuse. An interesting study from researchers at Yale University, Columbia…Procurement5 min readProcurement5 min read
Oct 11Reverse Auctions Are the Superior Procurement ApproachFor business-to-business buyers, what is the best way to buy something? Looking at it from the other side, what is the best way to sell something to a business-to-business buyer? Well, as an economist, I naturally defer to the answer, “it depends.” I need more information to answer. First, what…Procurement5 min readProcurement5 min read
Sep 22Member-onlySuppliers Don’t Respond to RFPs Because They Think They’re RiggedA Request for Proposal (RFP) is a reverse auction. Unlike a regular auction in which there is a single seller and an audience of buyers bidding up the price of the item, in a reverse auction there is a single buyer facing a crowd of suppliers bidding down the price…Rfp4 min readRfp4 min read
Aug 29In Procurement, Value Isn’t Price and Price Isn’t ValueImagine a new procurement officer named Jill who joined an established manufacturing company recently. She has been put in charge of her first project. She needs to purchase 1,000 pounds of Grade C Copper. It’s a commodity. …Procurement4 min readProcurement4 min read
Aug 8Joint Procurement Does Not Have to Be SlowEvery large sourcing event is now a team event, as we wrote about previously in “Procurement Is a Team Sport,” quoting Gartner: “The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers, each armed with four or five pieces of information they’ve gathered independently and…Procurement4 min readProcurement4 min read
Aug 5In Procurement, Margins Are More Important than Cost SavingsThe conventional wisdom about procurement is that cost savings are the fundamental priority. One sees this emphasis all the time. Here is Procurement Magazine referring to the 2023 Hackett Group survey: “Procurement’s main priorities for the year include ensuring supply continuity, combatting inflationary pressures and reducing spend cost.” Who could…Procurement4 min readProcurement4 min read
