7 Strategies To Prevent Delays In Getting The Customer’s Purchase Order

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Successfully Navigating The Procurement (PO) Maze

Implications for Procurement

The PO Maze can frustrate the manager, as well as the seller and it does not do procurement any good either. If not handled properly it can reinforce the image of procurement as a bureaucratic ‘blocking’ function. That is a challenge when procurement’s success depends on it being seen as a ‘value adding partner’

Procurement is making deliberate efforts to re-position itself. Further evidence of this can be seen in the focus of Procurecon 2014 – the leading event for procurement processionals:
‘…create value, build trust and partner with your business to gain more credibility inside your organization and outside with suppliers.’

In many organizations procurement has work to do in communicating its procedures. But it doesn’t just need to explain the procedures and paperwork that are required, but also WHY they are required. They have to sell them to the managers who will have to follow them.

There is another important implication for procurement in respect of how it handles the PO and other aspects of the procurement process – a process that is unnecessarily complex and frustrating has the potential to dishearten and demotivate the supplier. As one sales manager put it ‘there is no more effective way to erode good will than for procurement to come on the scene at the last minute and start to unfairly re-write the terms’.