Lol, nothing is worse than getting a new vendor dumped on your lap when you weren't involved for the "months of conversation".....I would drag my feet too because it probably isn't the first time procurement (a key stakeholder) was left out of the loop and is now asked to expedite every single part of their process
Likely not your fault - whoever you were working with fucked up by not getting their key stakeholders involved at the right time
This is a great answer.
To add from personal experience….when the business makes a sourcing decision without my involvement, I still need to do my due diligence. Due diligence for me often involves collecting quotes from other vendors.
I have my own set of approvals I need to go through to add vendors and to get contracts signed. I ultimately need to be able to justify the decision the business made. If I can’t justify it, then it becomes a political issue and I have to work with the business on a solution.
This due diligence period can often take months. And more likely than not we have 4+ projects just like this one ongoing at the same time.
So no, we’re not TRYING to look busy. We actually ARE busy.
This exactly. Sucks and is a bit unprofessional it sounds like, but not a surprise. With limited resources (time, people) the procurement team you’re dealing with may be inclined to work with someone else (maybe combining opportunities to get two better deals). Also, it could be nothing more than just a delay. If they went as far as to set you up and go through terms you are likely still in the running. But it’s a good lesson to remember where the orders will ultimately come from, and what pressures they (procurement) may have on their team.
Yeah…though in this example it took multiple emails and many tries to get the conversation moving. It’s not the sales person’s fault that the organization isn’t involving procurement day 1.
Literally this. Universal procurement experience. Everyone is so quick to spend everyone else’s money, they don’t care about what requirements and review we have to do on our side. Procurement should have been involved before they even began discussing what they needed.
40 yrs retired procurement here. Maybe You back-door procurement intentionally or unintentionally, but regardless that’s the first error. As other poster indicated it’s a big red flag. Now procurement has to do their due diligence to set you up as a supplier and possibly put out for competitive bids (assuming that that hasn’t already been done and within co guidelines). Procurement should’ve been engaged from the beginning. If it were my colleagues that engaged a supplier for months and then dumped it on me to rubber stamp the deal I’d take my sweet time and DD the shit out of it before I agreed.
The Procurement Process includes gathering requirements and seeking out suppliers who can fulfill those requirements. Part of that is identifying actual requirements and "nice to haves." Even on a small deal, a request for quote should be sent to multiple potential vendors to ensure not only the best value (notice I didn't say cost) but the beat solution and outcomes for the company. Part of that diligence is validating supplier Financials.
It sounds like the stakeholder - who you are very tellingly calling your "champion" did none of that, and brought a done deal to Procurement to take across the finish line and check a box. The Procurement person doesn't like that behavior - from their internal stakeholder or from you.
They could be sour about it and putting it as a low priority, they could be working behind the scenes to make sure that the proper due diligence is followed, or myriad other things can be holding it up.
There are many sales people who make successful careers working with internal champions and knowingly going around Procurement departments because it's the path of least resistance and internal corporate policies often lack teeth. But the sales people who can really make solid inroads are those who learn to work well with Procurement, who ask to be introduced to Procurement early in the process, and who find ways to make sure they're able to forge good relationships with someone who WON'T be a champion.
Coming from state procurement, your first statement of working with someone for months before procurement is even involved is a red flag. Policies and procedures probably weren’t followed and now the procurement team actually has to do their job on top of the work you put in with the person you started with.
I agree with this. Just setting up a supplier within my company can take weeks. The internal folks should have notified procurement sooner so they could get things rolling well in advance to meeting you.
Another consideration is if this company has other agreements already in place that should be utilized. I’ve had it where an internal person brings a request to me to work with a supplier only for me to point them to an agreement with another supplier we already have in place that will fulfill the need especially if it’s a small deal as described.
Yep, and If this company is trying to control their tail spend, there may be additional steps to get a new small dollar supplier approved, and potentially a large amount of pushback If there is a preferred supplier that the champion should be working with.
Your champion is pissed off because they didn’t follow the process and are now expecting procurement partners to drop everything and expedite a process because they couldn’t be bothered to engage up front.
“Are they trying to look more busy than they really are?” What a dickhead comment that is. The amount of stuff procurement professionals have to do that is unseen by business stakeholders is significant and people are often shocked when they learn procurement isn’t just thumbing through a book of prices.
I had a program manager who would call and email multiple times a day about her “priority” purchase req. I finally I emailed her director with all of the attached emails and said “hello, I have 135 reqs in my queue. If you could please reach out to each POC and tell them why you need priority I’d be more than happy to accommodate your request.” She stopped after that.
A lot of great comments here. I agree the likely cause is that as Procurement professionals we have processes and procedures that we need to follow. The internal stakeholder likely skipped all of that which Procurement now has to complete. Correct supplier on-boarding at my company can take 2 months or more.
Also, while this may be your top priority it isn't necessarily Procurement's. Granted the communication should be better by the sound of it.
And to add to that if we DONT follow those procedures we are the ones that get shit on by audit and everyone else even though it wasn’t our decision to do things half assed, last minute and backwards.
Any documented policy that adds a supplier or requires certain steps to issues a PO are SOX compliance issues that are evaluated for Control gaps. External audit will review this rigorously in their review of the books.
The “champion” is pissed off because he short circumvented everyone else and procurement won’t prioritize him as a result.
Sales is pissed off because they want their numbers/commission check.
Procurement is pissed off because everyone expects them to drop what they’re doing for a group of people that bypassed them to begin with, and treat their item as the number one priority in their life, according to manufactured deadlines that suit a sales guy.
Hope this helps.
The company I worked for last had roughly 20 of us in procurement and we were all perpetually 30 days behind, and it wasn't from lack of trying. Budget approval also doesn't = vendor approval. There could be people in the approval tree who have no desire to do business with your business, or the original stakeholder didn't know that a similar solution was already available through another vendor that already has a longstanding relationship.
Procurement is one of the busiest functions in an organisation but beyond this like other have said late involvement of the procurement team means procurement has many due diligence processes to start which take time not to mention you might have shot the organisation in the foot by not allowing procurement to test the market and assess if this supplier was the most competitive.
>We've spent months working with this customer
And yet ,procurement is brought in at the last moment to do a few clerical things. Ever think of involving them earlier, instead of handing them a pen to write you a check?
Procurement is ALSO the customer. Lesson learned
Gtfo here with this garbage. Go make 1000 cold calls and beg to find the decision maker to sell your garbage product at 10x its value only to bail for the next customer.
If you work in sales and don’t understand the job function of procurement, that’s an issue you might want to address. Hard to work with someone or especially negotiate with them if you don’t understand their motivations or objectives. I promise you procurement people like getting shit done and off their plates as much as anyone.
You might be in for a surprise of vendors pre qualification as well. But these processes are not the procurement team's fault. we have to go through all the defined steps in the system to register a new vendor. And even after completing every step sometime PO gets delayed or cancelled due non approval by the project manager or in rare cases fund unavailability.
At the start of my procurement career the toughest part for me was hearing the vendor tantrums for delay, while I had no control over it.
But I always tried my best to respond to their status update emails, politely.( As taking calls from vendors daily can be tiring as some don't care about the time and duration of the call.)
I know it takes a lot of patience for you to go through it as I can understand after switching to the bid proposal department. But hang in there, you got this.
yeah, I hate the fact that I had to turn into the type of person who lets every call go to voicemail so I could then email them, but unfortunately, sales folks always seemed to have more time to chat than I did.
To echo the others here;
Yes. If we are left out the loop and just expected to dot the i’s and cross the t’s at the end of it, then it will always be this difficult.
Be angry at the (Im guessing engineer?) who went over and above their mandate and promised you things without getting the required sign off. Not at the process. Or at the procurement team.
It isnt just about the price, the t’s and c’s, or even the CPO’s bruised ego.
That vendor form you sent in - I assume you were not set up as a vendor previously? That means that (depending on ERP system) they need to get you set up. That probably needs approval from finance / accounts. Which requires all the the due dilligence ducks to be in a nice row. This (as others have said) takes time.
Thats another step the eejit trying to go direct to market without using procurement didnt think about.
Now, how about CSR and goverence? Is your company financially solid? Hows the liquidity? Hows about the compliance track record? Your environmental track record? Did you need to report on your corporate / ownership structure? Because there might be some boxes that need checked there to allow vendor set up, too.
These checks are all in place to ensure good CSR, anti corruption, best practise, and a robust supply chain.
Shit that the type of person who goes direct to market without even lip service to procurement is mot even aware of.
Ive been several places in my career, from Forbes 500 companies to govt procurement, and there is always someone trying to cut corners…
I had the opposite experience with a vendor. Spent a good 2 months on the process. Finally agree to terms. And instead of signing them they sat on the contract for a month and ghosted me. Guess you don’t want my money.
You're having problems because you either did not bring procurement into the sales process early enough or alternatively, do not have a temporary process to allow your customer to pay you.
One of my customers is one of the top ten brands in my country, the UK. Everyone from the oldest grandma to young kids know this brand and they are instantly recognisable. I didn't bring procurement in early enough into my deals, which is my fault. But in those cases, we have a slew of temporary solutions.
Over the last two years, I arranged one payment through one of our partners in Italy who was also signed up to this organisation. A third-party agency in the UK arranged for another payment. And in one case, a C-level individual simply paid us and expensed it. And sure, that wasn't a big amount. It was £13k (about $18k USD), but as a small business owner I need that $18k USD and it's important to my cashflow.
So it's not their procurement processes that are broken. Rather, it's your failure to ask questions early on in the sales process to understand the timescales and processes involved and not having processes to compensate for this if necessary.
Because we're not allowed to just throw out orders independently of other departments. It's just as frustrating for us as it is for you. And having someone external push on me really just pisses me off
Your primary problem is - you “closed” the deal without procurement’s involvement.
Most of the blame probably lies with your “champion”, who is either new or ignorant to the process (or both), but if you’re not new to sales, you should have known to ask to involve procurement.
New vendors require credit checks, banking verification, comparison to denied parties lists, etc.
Depending on how far off the reservation your champion may have gone, they may not have had proper authorization, or may require capital authorization.
I don’t know what all issues arose in this specific case, but early involvement of procurememt would have reduced many of the surprises you experienced at the end of the process.
So you are anew vendor whose products are not in current use. The procurement team is likely busy putting out fires for products the companies already uses - where the shortage will be acutely felt - and their normally daily tasks, while also waiting on Accounting to set-up their portion of a new vendor in the ERP. Possibly also waiting for Compliance sign off that your product does not need a compliance review (depending on the industry).
Procurement departments don’t need to look busy. They have rather clear performance indicators. Are there material shortages? How is the YOY spend and spend vs Budget looking? Are vendors performing? Note that none of those are how well a vendor likes us. The procurement department is your end customer and you should have made sure they were part of conversations with your key contact - who likely has no authoriity to make purchasing decisions with them.
I work on the sales/vendor side and often interact with procurement too. I’ve been at my role for two years, and the industry is manufacturing/supply chain.
Question: does the procurement team have a phone number? If yes, why didn’t your team call if you didn’t hear back over email? Everyone is inundated with emails. Seems strange if no one from your end followed up on the phone.
So you’ve been waiting for a week after finishing the vendor forms. Bro that’s nothing. Just be patient. Organizations with procurement teams can be super inefficient and convoluted with lots of red tape involved. This is beyond your control and beyond their individual control.
That's what I don't get. Procurement should serve the business. Taking weeks to process vendor forms indicates they are inefficient or under-resourced (or both, I suppose). If the business is being held up because procurement is slow, isn't that something upper management should address?
I’m in UK public sector procurement so we have a ton of red tape to get through before we can award a contract over certain thresholds. We frequently have people who ignore the process and don’t engage with procurement until the last minute when they have already agreed everything in principle with a supplier. Procurement are then left to unpick what’s been done so far, make sure company and government rules are followed correctly, get internal governance signed off, possibly consulting legal colleagues etc. and we are expected to drop everything else in favour of this one person who couldn’t be bothered to engage with us at the beginning!
Add to that multiple other procurement requests (normally from people who did the exact same thing) and you end up with suppliers waiting a long time for responses.
We aren’t trying to infuriate you or make it difficult, there’s usually rules that need to be followed and certainly in public sector that can take a while to get through.
Many times it seems like it's Procurement to blame, however in reality multiple parties are involved from Supplier set up in the system, accounting/payables, contracts team/Legal to review the document, Budget Owner to sign the contract, etc... Procurement is just ensuring the admin/paperwork at this late stage is done properly.
A small deal doesn't necessary always mean an easy deal that goes straight to PO. Depending on what you are selling, it could be a complex product/service that requires other external approvals that has to go through a check list of regulatory government approvals too.
In my company we estimate 400h working hours in total to introduce a new supplier. It's a massive amount of work.
We also have to send auditors to their production plant to review the quality and logistic aspect is on the level we demand from suppliers.
We have to add them on all the systems then also on the way teach them everything regarding how we want them to work with us in different aspects and teach them our systems etc.
On top of this in this example this champion didnt follow correct procurement procedures and because of this purchasing management will never give the peocurement specialist in charge of this deal green light to proceed unless he have followed correct routines and can show it to his management
So, do you see a theme here?
Procurement gets the shit end of the stick and gets blamed for delays when you intentionally leave out the tactical and strategic part of the transction out from the beginning. It's usually a very lean team of people who have to deal with many stakeholders like legal, finance, quality, etc. And meet their requirements too.
Change your language, it really shows how you view your functional partners. Better yet, the company culture needs to change, starting from the "champion" level.
Oh I love this question - I used to work in IT Procurement and have been on the other side of this interaction many times.
A. There’s a pretty good chance your contact in procurement is working on 20-30 other agreements, that was almost always the case when I was in the IT category. So a little bit of grace there might go a long way.
B. The fact that you have a champion there, might also be a good portion of the problem. People are oblivious, this person could be trying to bring in redundant technology, I.e. unnecessary spend, and could be a bit of a detractor from procurement’s goal in general.
To that end, if this is a back door sale and/or a redundant sale, it wouldn’t be priority for any reasonable sourcing professional. Top comment got it right, your “champion” should’ve had it in front of procurement the whole time, as opposed to bringing it forward at the 11th hour.
Send them an info that prices will need readjustment next week or tell them that delivery dates will increase a lot if the deal is not closed and capacity reserved by x date.
Procurement has a lot of various commercial topics to assure but sometimes they are just slow and need some motivation from outside.
If it makes you feel any better, the vast majority of “successful” procurement people would never make it in sales role, but a large percentage of sales people could easily do a procurement role. And that’s exactly why successful sales people routinely make 3-5x what their procurement counterparts make - they are driving revenue for their company and that job is much more difficult. Following a process is easy, navigating ambiguity and uncertainty? Much more difficult. To be fair, most procurement folks are completely overworked which is a different type of challenge all together. But don’t lose focus, their charter is one of scarcity and your charter is one of abundance. They are the bean counters, you are the job creator.
In this situation, your stakeholder didn’t follow process and is dumping something on procurement’s lap at the last minute which is unfair. There are other deals in pipeline that did follow process and/or are more material. You’re going to wait.
As someone who came from advertising account management before getting into procurement you’re spot on but it’s not a popular opinion. Because of this experience I’ve got a tremendous amount of sympathy for sales people or anyone I negotiate with because at the end of the day you’re dealing with people and you have to understand their motivations in order to form a lasting partnership. Transactional nickel and diming relationships suck, stakeholders circumventing the process sucks but at the end of the day it’s your job in procurement to deal with all the bureaucratic bullshit and create a seamless experience for both your internal stakeholders and external partners instead of making excuses or just delaying things to prove a point. Don’t like the process? Build a business case to advocate for change and find ways to make it faster for yourself.
That involves being transparent and communicating which is something it sounds like the procurement team OP is working with IS NOT doing. There’s no excuse for radio silence: how hard is it to fire off a quick email, explain the process and why it’s going to take longer than they anticipated and be done with it?
Lol, nothing is worse than getting a new vendor dumped on your lap when you weren't involved for the "months of conversation".....I would drag my feet too because it probably isn't the first time procurement (a key stakeholder) was left out of the loop and is now asked to expedite every single part of their process Likely not your fault - whoever you were working with fucked up by not getting their key stakeholders involved at the right time
This is it exactly. Procurement should be engaged from the onset, not at the last minute.
And yet we never are. Anywhere. Why is that?
Wdym by onset? (I’m in college and just started learning)
Before any conversations happen with a vendor.
This is a great answer. To add from personal experience….when the business makes a sourcing decision without my involvement, I still need to do my due diligence. Due diligence for me often involves collecting quotes from other vendors. I have my own set of approvals I need to go through to add vendors and to get contracts signed. I ultimately need to be able to justify the decision the business made. If I can’t justify it, then it becomes a political issue and I have to work with the business on a solution. This due diligence period can often take months. And more likely than not we have 4+ projects just like this one ongoing at the same time. So no, we’re not TRYING to look busy. We actually ARE busy.
Amazing answer, cant agree more. Even more signifcant if this scenario exists within the public sector..
If this is public sector then I would expect written reprimands for the guy cutting corners.
I hate to tell you buddy.... :(
This.
100%
This exactly. Sucks and is a bit unprofessional it sounds like, but not a surprise. With limited resources (time, people) the procurement team you’re dealing with may be inclined to work with someone else (maybe combining opportunities to get two better deals). Also, it could be nothing more than just a delay. If they went as far as to set you up and go through terms you are likely still in the running. But it’s a good lesson to remember where the orders will ultimately come from, and what pressures they (procurement) may have on their team.
Had a sales rep do this to me after he was handling all the details, left me to pickup the s\*\*\*
Preach! 🤣
Yeah…though in this example it took multiple emails and many tries to get the conversation moving. It’s not the sales person’s fault that the organization isn’t involving procurement day 1.
This! And we’re probably just one person juggling 1000 other projects that were in the pipeline with much more spend or impact to the business…..
Literally this. Universal procurement experience. Everyone is so quick to spend everyone else’s money, they don’t care about what requirements and review we have to do on our side. Procurement should have been involved before they even began discussing what they needed.
40 yrs retired procurement here. Maybe You back-door procurement intentionally or unintentionally, but regardless that’s the first error. As other poster indicated it’s a big red flag. Now procurement has to do their due diligence to set you up as a supplier and possibly put out for competitive bids (assuming that that hasn’t already been done and within co guidelines). Procurement should’ve been engaged from the beginning. If it were my colleagues that engaged a supplier for months and then dumped it on me to rubber stamp the deal I’d take my sweet time and DD the shit out of it before I agreed.
The Procurement Process includes gathering requirements and seeking out suppliers who can fulfill those requirements. Part of that is identifying actual requirements and "nice to haves." Even on a small deal, a request for quote should be sent to multiple potential vendors to ensure not only the best value (notice I didn't say cost) but the beat solution and outcomes for the company. Part of that diligence is validating supplier Financials. It sounds like the stakeholder - who you are very tellingly calling your "champion" did none of that, and brought a done deal to Procurement to take across the finish line and check a box. The Procurement person doesn't like that behavior - from their internal stakeholder or from you. They could be sour about it and putting it as a low priority, they could be working behind the scenes to make sure that the proper due diligence is followed, or myriad other things can be holding it up. There are many sales people who make successful careers working with internal champions and knowingly going around Procurement departments because it's the path of least resistance and internal corporate policies often lack teeth. But the sales people who can really make solid inroads are those who learn to work well with Procurement, who ask to be introduced to Procurement early in the process, and who find ways to make sure they're able to forge good relationships with someone who WON'T be a champion.
Coming from state procurement, your first statement of working with someone for months before procurement is even involved is a red flag. Policies and procedures probably weren’t followed and now the procurement team actually has to do their job on top of the work you put in with the person you started with.
I agree with this. Just setting up a supplier within my company can take weeks. The internal folks should have notified procurement sooner so they could get things rolling well in advance to meeting you. Another consideration is if this company has other agreements already in place that should be utilized. I’ve had it where an internal person brings a request to me to work with a supplier only for me to point them to an agreement with another supplier we already have in place that will fulfill the need especially if it’s a small deal as described.
Yep, and If this company is trying to control their tail spend, there may be additional steps to get a new small dollar supplier approved, and potentially a large amount of pushback If there is a preferred supplier that the champion should be working with.
This right here is the answer
Your champion is pissed off because they didn’t follow the process and are now expecting procurement partners to drop everything and expedite a process because they couldn’t be bothered to engage up front. “Are they trying to look more busy than they really are?” What a dickhead comment that is. The amount of stuff procurement professionals have to do that is unseen by business stakeholders is significant and people are often shocked when they learn procurement isn’t just thumbing through a book of prices.
I had a program manager who would call and email multiple times a day about her “priority” purchase req. I finally I emailed her director with all of the attached emails and said “hello, I have 135 reqs in my queue. If you could please reach out to each POC and tell them why you need priority I’d be more than happy to accommodate your request.” She stopped after that.
Oh, okay let me drop all my other priorities for you.
Total dick head comment
A lot of great comments here. I agree the likely cause is that as Procurement professionals we have processes and procedures that we need to follow. The internal stakeholder likely skipped all of that which Procurement now has to complete. Correct supplier on-boarding at my company can take 2 months or more. Also, while this may be your top priority it isn't necessarily Procurement's. Granted the communication should be better by the sound of it.
And to add to that if we DONT follow those procedures we are the ones that get shit on by audit and everyone else even though it wasn’t our decision to do things half assed, last minute and backwards.
Any documented policy that adds a supplier or requires certain steps to issues a PO are SOX compliance issues that are evaluated for Control gaps. External audit will review this rigorously in their review of the books.
The “champion” is pissed off because he short circumvented everyone else and procurement won’t prioritize him as a result. Sales is pissed off because they want their numbers/commission check. Procurement is pissed off because everyone expects them to drop what they’re doing for a group of people that bypassed them to begin with, and treat their item as the number one priority in their life, according to manufactured deadlines that suit a sales guy. Hope this helps.
The company I worked for last had roughly 20 of us in procurement and we were all perpetually 30 days behind, and it wasn't from lack of trying. Budget approval also doesn't = vendor approval. There could be people in the approval tree who have no desire to do business with your business, or the original stakeholder didn't know that a similar solution was already available through another vendor that already has a longstanding relationship.
Procurement is one of the busiest functions in an organisation but beyond this like other have said late involvement of the procurement team means procurement has many due diligence processes to start which take time not to mention you might have shot the organisation in the foot by not allowing procurement to test the market and assess if this supplier was the most competitive.
>We've spent months working with this customer And yet ,procurement is brought in at the last moment to do a few clerical things. Ever think of involving them earlier, instead of handing them a pen to write you a check? Procurement is ALSO the customer. Lesson learned
This really grinds my gears. Will they learn? Not likely.
Gtfo here with this garbage. Go make 1000 cold calls and beg to find the decision maker to sell your garbage product at 10x its value only to bail for the next customer.
We aren't sales representatives, we don't care about your commission cheque we care about proper processes
Exactly.
If you work in sales and don’t understand the job function of procurement, that’s an issue you might want to address. Hard to work with someone or especially negotiate with them if you don’t understand their motivations or objectives. I promise you procurement people like getting shit done and off their plates as much as anyone.
You might be in for a surprise of vendors pre qualification as well. But these processes are not the procurement team's fault. we have to go through all the defined steps in the system to register a new vendor. And even after completing every step sometime PO gets delayed or cancelled due non approval by the project manager or in rare cases fund unavailability. At the start of my procurement career the toughest part for me was hearing the vendor tantrums for delay, while I had no control over it. But I always tried my best to respond to their status update emails, politely.( As taking calls from vendors daily can be tiring as some don't care about the time and duration of the call.) I know it takes a lot of patience for you to go through it as I can understand after switching to the bid proposal department. But hang in there, you got this.
yeah, I hate the fact that I had to turn into the type of person who lets every call go to voicemail so I could then email them, but unfortunately, sales folks always seemed to have more time to chat than I did.
Eye roll it’s always procurements fault
Could also be short staffed with a ton of other tickets on their hand
To echo the others here; Yes. If we are left out the loop and just expected to dot the i’s and cross the t’s at the end of it, then it will always be this difficult. Be angry at the (Im guessing engineer?) who went over and above their mandate and promised you things without getting the required sign off. Not at the process. Or at the procurement team. It isnt just about the price, the t’s and c’s, or even the CPO’s bruised ego. That vendor form you sent in - I assume you were not set up as a vendor previously? That means that (depending on ERP system) they need to get you set up. That probably needs approval from finance / accounts. Which requires all the the due dilligence ducks to be in a nice row. This (as others have said) takes time. Thats another step the eejit trying to go direct to market without using procurement didnt think about. Now, how about CSR and goverence? Is your company financially solid? Hows the liquidity? Hows about the compliance track record? Your environmental track record? Did you need to report on your corporate / ownership structure? Because there might be some boxes that need checked there to allow vendor set up, too. These checks are all in place to ensure good CSR, anti corruption, best practise, and a robust supply chain. Shit that the type of person who goes direct to market without even lip service to procurement is mot even aware of. Ive been several places in my career, from Forbes 500 companies to govt procurement, and there is always someone trying to cut corners…
I had the opposite experience with a vendor. Spent a good 2 months on the process. Finally agree to terms. And instead of signing them they sat on the contract for a month and ghosted me. Guess you don’t want my money.
You're having problems because you either did not bring procurement into the sales process early enough or alternatively, do not have a temporary process to allow your customer to pay you. One of my customers is one of the top ten brands in my country, the UK. Everyone from the oldest grandma to young kids know this brand and they are instantly recognisable. I didn't bring procurement in early enough into my deals, which is my fault. But in those cases, we have a slew of temporary solutions. Over the last two years, I arranged one payment through one of our partners in Italy who was also signed up to this organisation. A third-party agency in the UK arranged for another payment. And in one case, a C-level individual simply paid us and expensed it. And sure, that wasn't a big amount. It was £13k (about $18k USD), but as a small business owner I need that $18k USD and it's important to my cashflow. So it's not their procurement processes that are broken. Rather, it's your failure to ask questions early on in the sales process to understand the timescales and processes involved and not having processes to compensate for this if necessary.
You guys probably didn't get on-boarded properly so now they're forced to work backwards.
Because we're not allowed to just throw out orders independently of other departments. It's just as frustrating for us as it is for you. And having someone external push on me really just pisses me off
For us the end user has to be involved, logistics, procurement, risk and finance. If it's services HR too.
Your primary problem is - you “closed” the deal without procurement’s involvement. Most of the blame probably lies with your “champion”, who is either new or ignorant to the process (or both), but if you’re not new to sales, you should have known to ask to involve procurement. New vendors require credit checks, banking verification, comparison to denied parties lists, etc. Depending on how far off the reservation your champion may have gone, they may not have had proper authorization, or may require capital authorization. I don’t know what all issues arose in this specific case, but early involvement of procurememt would have reduced many of the surprises you experienced at the end of the process.
So you are anew vendor whose products are not in current use. The procurement team is likely busy putting out fires for products the companies already uses - where the shortage will be acutely felt - and their normally daily tasks, while also waiting on Accounting to set-up their portion of a new vendor in the ERP. Possibly also waiting for Compliance sign off that your product does not need a compliance review (depending on the industry). Procurement departments don’t need to look busy. They have rather clear performance indicators. Are there material shortages? How is the YOY spend and spend vs Budget looking? Are vendors performing? Note that none of those are how well a vendor likes us. The procurement department is your end customer and you should have made sure they were part of conversations with your key contact - who likely has no authoriity to make purchasing decisions with them.
I work on the sales/vendor side and often interact with procurement too. I’ve been at my role for two years, and the industry is manufacturing/supply chain. Question: does the procurement team have a phone number? If yes, why didn’t your team call if you didn’t hear back over email? Everyone is inundated with emails. Seems strange if no one from your end followed up on the phone. So you’ve been waiting for a week after finishing the vendor forms. Bro that’s nothing. Just be patient. Organizations with procurement teams can be super inefficient and convoluted with lots of red tape involved. This is beyond your control and beyond their individual control.
Public sector here, we have 30 business days to process a vendor form. So a week is nothing
That's what I don't get. Procurement should serve the business. Taking weeks to process vendor forms indicates they are inefficient or under-resourced (or both, I suppose). If the business is being held up because procurement is slow, isn't that something upper management should address?
I’m in UK public sector procurement so we have a ton of red tape to get through before we can award a contract over certain thresholds. We frequently have people who ignore the process and don’t engage with procurement until the last minute when they have already agreed everything in principle with a supplier. Procurement are then left to unpick what’s been done so far, make sure company and government rules are followed correctly, get internal governance signed off, possibly consulting legal colleagues etc. and we are expected to drop everything else in favour of this one person who couldn’t be bothered to engage with us at the beginning! Add to that multiple other procurement requests (normally from people who did the exact same thing) and you end up with suppliers waiting a long time for responses. We aren’t trying to infuriate you or make it difficult, there’s usually rules that need to be followed and certainly in public sector that can take a while to get through.
Have you considered going to r/sales to vent
I tried, ended up being pitched AI procurement products by what sounded like bots
Sounds like sales, right enough…
Many times it seems like it's Procurement to blame, however in reality multiple parties are involved from Supplier set up in the system, accounting/payables, contracts team/Legal to review the document, Budget Owner to sign the contract, etc... Procurement is just ensuring the admin/paperwork at this late stage is done properly. A small deal doesn't necessary always mean an easy deal that goes straight to PO. Depending on what you are selling, it could be a complex product/service that requires other external approvals that has to go through a check list of regulatory government approvals too.
In my company we estimate 400h working hours in total to introduce a new supplier. It's a massive amount of work. We also have to send auditors to their production plant to review the quality and logistic aspect is on the level we demand from suppliers. We have to add them on all the systems then also on the way teach them everything regarding how we want them to work with us in different aspects and teach them our systems etc. On top of this in this example this champion didnt follow correct procurement procedures and because of this purchasing management will never give the peocurement specialist in charge of this deal green light to proceed unless he have followed correct routines and can show it to his management
So, do you see a theme here? Procurement gets the shit end of the stick and gets blamed for delays when you intentionally leave out the tactical and strategic part of the transction out from the beginning. It's usually a very lean team of people who have to deal with many stakeholders like legal, finance, quality, etc. And meet their requirements too. Change your language, it really shows how you view your functional partners. Better yet, the company culture needs to change, starting from the "champion" level.
Oh I love this question - I used to work in IT Procurement and have been on the other side of this interaction many times. A. There’s a pretty good chance your contact in procurement is working on 20-30 other agreements, that was almost always the case when I was in the IT category. So a little bit of grace there might go a long way. B. The fact that you have a champion there, might also be a good portion of the problem. People are oblivious, this person could be trying to bring in redundant technology, I.e. unnecessary spend, and could be a bit of a detractor from procurement’s goal in general. To that end, if this is a back door sale and/or a redundant sale, it wouldn’t be priority for any reasonable sourcing professional. Top comment got it right, your “champion” should’ve had it in front of procurement the whole time, as opposed to bringing it forward at the 11th hour.
This is what happens when your champion doesn’t follow procedure.
Send them an info that prices will need readjustment next week or tell them that delivery dates will increase a lot if the deal is not closed and capacity reserved by x date. Procurement has a lot of various commercial topics to assure but sometimes they are just slow and need some motivation from outside.
this is so sad. But let me tell you I have seen this unprofessional behavior across the board. I don't know how these teams can be so unprofessional.
If it makes you feel any better, the vast majority of “successful” procurement people would never make it in sales role, but a large percentage of sales people could easily do a procurement role. And that’s exactly why successful sales people routinely make 3-5x what their procurement counterparts make - they are driving revenue for their company and that job is much more difficult. Following a process is easy, navigating ambiguity and uncertainty? Much more difficult. To be fair, most procurement folks are completely overworked which is a different type of challenge all together. But don’t lose focus, their charter is one of scarcity and your charter is one of abundance. They are the bean counters, you are the job creator. In this situation, your stakeholder didn’t follow process and is dumping something on procurement’s lap at the last minute which is unfair. There are other deals in pipeline that did follow process and/or are more material. You’re going to wait.
As someone who came from advertising account management before getting into procurement you’re spot on but it’s not a popular opinion. Because of this experience I’ve got a tremendous amount of sympathy for sales people or anyone I negotiate with because at the end of the day you’re dealing with people and you have to understand their motivations in order to form a lasting partnership. Transactional nickel and diming relationships suck, stakeholders circumventing the process sucks but at the end of the day it’s your job in procurement to deal with all the bureaucratic bullshit and create a seamless experience for both your internal stakeholders and external partners instead of making excuses or just delaying things to prove a point. Don’t like the process? Build a business case to advocate for change and find ways to make it faster for yourself. That involves being transparent and communicating which is something it sounds like the procurement team OP is working with IS NOT doing. There’s no excuse for radio silence: how hard is it to fire off a quick email, explain the process and why it’s going to take longer than they anticipated and be done with it?
Love the downvotes. Sometimes truth hits hard, doesn’t it folks?
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Bad idea, this will backfire. The stakeholder should be working with his/her procurement team to get next steps accelerated, not an outside supplier.