The Game Theory of Procurement and RFPs
Jeff Bezos is one of the wealthiest men in the world. He is extraordinarily good at management. He has a useful analogy for decisions. “Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, with great deliberation and consultation. If you walk through […]
What Do Vendors Want?
Many suppliers tell us that they don’t respond to RFPs. They see them as “rigged” or “wired.” They think that the outcome of the RFP is pre-determined. It is nothing more than a pro forma exercise in compliance. Others tell us their frustration when they see an RFP that is inconsistent. This happens in technology […]
Reference Checks Reign Supreme in Vendor Risk Management
There 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. Some of them may use AI (and shortly generative AI) to make judgments about the suppliers. This is […]
What 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 employees or the founders of […]
Good Procurement Practices Massively Lower Costs
Internal 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 University, and the University of […]
Suppliers Don’t Respond to RFPs Because They Think They’re Rigged
A 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 (and/or increasing the quality) […]
In Procurement, Value Isn’t Price and Price Isn’t Value
Imagine 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. She needs to guarantee its delivery to the company’s factory in North Dakota on a specific date: November […]
Competitive Sourcing Leads to Diverse Sourcing
Deloitte found in its 2023 Chief Procurement Officer survey that the top three priorities were: driving operational efficiency, enhancing ESG/CSR, and digital transformation. ESG has become more important over time. As recently as 2021, improving ESG ranked only seventh on the list of priorities. Society is changing. The contemporary enterprise must adapt and evolve to […]
What Do People Want from Procurement Technology?
“Good marketing is the craft of understanding what people want and need and helping them achieve it.” – Seth Godin What do people want from procurement technology? They want it all. Outcomes If we start with outcomes, they want to make sure that they are buying the right solution for the problem at hand. If you’re […]
Generative Text is the Procurement Junior Staffer You Didn’t Know You Needed
Procurement is the first mile of the supply chain. Already, before the Pandemic, procurement teams were spread too thin. When Covid hit with its full force, these employees faced tremendous additional stressors, challenges that persist in many ways. It’s no wonder that there is burnout. 89% of survey respondents in this Keelvar survey say that they are “banking […]