Procurement and sourcing

This is everything before signature: deciding what to buy, from whom, and on what terms. operations:vendor-management takes over afterward — performance, renewals, exit.

Specify the need, not the product

Most bad purchases are decided before any supplier is contacted, when a requirement is written as a product someone already wanted. Specify the outcome and the constraints; let suppliers propose how.

Separate genuine requirements from preferences, and be honest about which is which. A requirements list that only one supplier satisfies is a purchase order with extra steps, and everyone involved knows it.

Involve the people who will live with the choice. Procurement that optimizes price against a specification the users did not agree to produces a cheap thing nobody uses.

Competition is the leverage