How Do You Write a Good RFP?
How do you write a good RFP? A good RFP event is one in which you get a sufficient number of relevant responses to generate competition. You receive enough submissions so that the marginal benefit of the incremental proposal is equal to the marginal cost of evaluating it, as an economist might say. It attracts competition on price and solution from the most relevant vendors.
How Should Organizations Manage the Decentralization of Procurement?
Culture is defined as the substance behind the statement, “People like us do things like this.” In a world competing for talent, trust is key. Can we trust the people within the organization to do the right thing? If not, perhaps they shouldn’t be working here.
How Do You Drive Collaboration About Procurement Internally?
How do you drive collaboration about procurement internally?
How Many Sourcing Systems Should Buyers Employ?
Sourcing systems come in several different types:
Should Buyers or Suppliers Pay for Procurement?
More buyers than one might think use a piece of legacy software or some combination of email and spreadsheets to manage their procurement activities. In these cases, the buyer bears the cost.
Who Is Qualifying Whom in Procurement?
What is the link between marketing and procurement?
Is Problem-Solution Fit More Important than Cost in Procurement?
Companies buy goods and services to solve problems.
Should Supplier Networks Be One-to-Many or Many-to-Many?
Buyers get the most out of suppliers when they make it easy for suppliers to give them what they want. Suppliers want the ability to sell with a fast cycle and low transactions costs to as many potential customers who are a good fit and with whom they can develop deep, long-lasting, collaborative relationships.
Procurement Needs to Have Skin in the Game
Buyers who treated their suppliers as vassals who would (and presumably should) do anything for “the business” suffered disproportionately during the Covid supply chain shock of 2020.
How Do Buyers Know They Obtained Value for Money?
We purchase goods and services to solve problems. The right solution is the one that solves the problem most completely. With complicated problems or ones that have complex implications for other systems, this can be very difficult to ascertain. Often a good or service may appear to be the right solution, only for this calculus to turn out to be incorrect because of a failure to acknowledge the full extent (or even the existence of) complex interactions with other aspects of the firm.