Using an entirely unscientific method (asking the small handful of people sitting in my immediate vicinity) I discovered that a recurring frustration amongst procurement professionals is that we are regularly still having to fight for our profession to be invited to the table sufficiently early to really make an impact to the outcome of a project.

Sure, there are many organisations where a policy specifies that the Procurement Department ‘must’ be involved in supplier selection and that (based on specified values) tenders or quotes ‘must’ be sought to justify expenditure, however, the fact that these policies exist shows that getting the procurement department involved is still not seen as a normal part of doing business with a supplier.

Most of us will have, at some point, discussed or even bemoaned ‘maverick’ spend by our colleagues, the term itself conjuring up images of someone going against the grain or fighting the orthodoxy, but why is it that this is the default state of our professional colleagues?  After all these years of professionalising the procurement function, why are we still an afterthought?  Surely, the stakeholders should be knocking down our doors for our invaluable advice and guidance?

Is it personal?  

In a word – yes, I believe it is, but not personal about procurement.  It’s the personal that’s the problem - we’ve forgotten how real people actually buy.  

We are, all too often, trying to take the ‘personal’ out of the selection process.  We will legitimise this as a part of the process by discussing “objectivity”, “need verses want”, “not going for the gold plated versions”, or even “good verses good enough” but by doing this we the ones going against the grain as to how people make a buying decision.  We’re the mavericks.

In our real lives, I suspect that most of us would happily ask for a couple of quotes for work to be done in our homes, but I wonder how many procurement professionals would consider it ‘normal’ to write a tender document to buy a kitchen or a send a PQQ before deciding which company was right to provide our new car.  I suspect not many, it would just feel a bit, well, wrong…

How would our significant others and loved ones react if we said that they couldn’t know how much the new bathroom was going to be before they had evaluated and scored the response to the 25 page document covering the installation, ease of use, CVs of the sales team and the quality of their reference sites?  The evaluation criteria? That was all determined and documented up front when we got a ‘bathroom user group’ into a couple of meetings ‘round the dining room table to determine how important the noise of the flush was relative to the speed of toilet lid closure.  Again; wrong, wrong, wrong!

Outside of the office when make a purchasing decision, we do still use buying criteria but they are more intangible and difficult to pin down.  The ‘normal’ buying decisions are more about how we feel about a product or service, how it will impact us directly, our perception of the product, whether it is considered ‘cheap’ or ‘prestige’ and so on.  At face value, these more personal criteria may not seem useful or sufficiently objective to make good a buying decision, but, back in the office, these are the criteria that correlate to a hidden specification that the stakeholder is really using to judge the success of the buying process.  By ignoring these normal, personal buying criteria we are at risk of not fully understanding what is important to our stakeholder.

So, can we bring the personal back into our impersonal processes?

As a profession, we need to step out from behind our RFPs, RFQs, SLAs and ERPs and start to talk - using real words - with our colleagues about their world (OMG!).  We need to stop talking about specifications and criteria and get good at listening to what actually matters to the people themselves.

If your stakeholder has a preferred supplier for something – instead of treating this with suspicion and assuming that this is a ‘pet’ supplier and ‘too comfortable’ a relationship - ask your stakeholder why their supplier is so good.  Once they’ve told you about the warm, fuzzy feelings they get from being looked after, ask them specifics; How do they know they are being looked after?  What traits are particularly valuable from the relationship?  How often does the supplier need to show that they’ve done what they’ve asked?  How often does it happen?  What would happen if they didn’t?  What would they see if things weren’t going so well?  How do you know?  What extra measures would your stakeholder have to do to cover for what they’re not getting from the supplier?  And so on, and so on.  

By speaking on a personal level, what you are starting to build is not only a more detailed understanding of the specific thing you are helping to buy, but you are also building a description of the anticipated service levels your stakeholder really needs to experience and getting the specifics of the minimum acceptable criteria before the stakeholder needs to take action.  Yes, you’re building rapport and trust and in so doing, a professional relationship with the real people behind the technical spec but you’re also getting a better spec.  This isn’t just about building relationships; it’s also about doing good procurement.

There’s another plus point.  Procurement should be about getting the best supplier at the best price – not about getting the supplier who is best able to respond to another technical spec tender.  The hidden specification will allow you to better evaluate what is really the best supplier for your organisation.  It won’t be just a cut and paste from their last tender response – they need to give you the specifics against what your stakeholders really need to make them feel cosy with their suppliers and, by adding a little procurement expertise to the mix, it’s likely to be specific, measurable and well documented, too.

So, next time you have a stakeholder or internal customer who is less than enthusiastic about the procurement process, why not make it personal.  They probably have a good reason for why they want the Rolls Royce over the Mini and, being a procurement professional, it’s up to you to find out what the hidden specifications are that make the difference between your internal client seeing you as an annoying and disruptive box ticking exercise and a value-adding business partner who deserves their place at the table.