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I have been asked thousands of times by stakeholders throughout my more than 30-year career in Procurement, “When should Procurement get involved in a project?” The answer I give is: “as early as possible,” which prompts the question, “When is that?”
My response is to think of a clock. Not a true ticking clock, but a timeframe flow with hourly or a block of hours’ activities to bring clarity to a project. This can help determine the procurement process that offers the most benefit by being involved early enough in a project.
Therefore, when asked “When should Procurement get involved in a project?” I tell the stakeholder, “I want to be the second phone call, text, email, etc. you make. The first should be your manager or other stakeholder(s) you need to inform of the idea/need. I realize this might not always happen, but it emphasizes the importance of getting information to Procurement as early as possible.
Putting this all into a 12-hour clock, I start at 12:01. Keeping in mind that this 12-hour clock doesn’t abide by the known space-time continuum in that there are a set number of segments (i.e., 720 minutes or 12 actual hours), the segments can be contracted (within reason) or expanded as necessary.
12:01The stakeholder has the inspiration of an idea/need.
12:02 The stakeholder contacts their manager with the idea/need.
Therefore, when asked “When should Procurement get involved in a project?” I tell the stakeholder, “I want to be the second phone call, text, email, etc. you make
12:03 This is the time I would like to be notified of the idea/need. Procurement may not have a lot of input or work that needs to be done at this point, but the Procurement person can at least gauge how much involvement may be needed and, if necessary, put a placeholder for time and resources on a schedule/to do list.
12:01 – 3:00 Stakeholder puts together initial requirements and determines whether the idea/need can be accomplished internally or will need to be purchased. The stakeholder also estimates what resources will be required and gets preliminary approvals (Stakeholder Leadership & Finance).
3:01 This is the time that the stakeholder absolutely needs to get procurement involved so procurement can make sure that whatever parts of the procurement process, all if necessary, will be needed can be assigned resources and a realistic expected timeline can be set with the stakeholder. However, this is not typically when procurement is engaged, which will be pointed out later.
3:01 – 6:00 This is where procurement can start to create the most benefit. It could be as easy as making a few phone calls, putting non-disclosure agreements in place, drafting an RFx, which can be a request for information (RFIs), request for quotes (RFQ) or request for proposals (RFPs) or a combination of these activities. The stakeholder and procurement can collaborate to finalize a comprehensive requirements document, selecting potential suppliers in this timeframe, setting project timelines and creating evaluation criteria. However, in many cases, and for various reasons, the stakeholder often attempts to handle these themselves without the help or knowledge of procurement, believing they are helping expedite the process.
6:01 – 9:00 At this point on the clock, the competitive actions begin in the form of the RFx. Procurement and the stakeholder work collaboratively to ensure that all information is provided to the suppliers, review quotes/proposals, perform the weighted scoring of responses to select the best supplier/solution, conduct pricing negotiations (not necessarily looking to select the cheapest) to meet the idea/need and to select the supplier.
9:00:59 This is the time that procurement is typically brought in or contacted about the idea/need, and all the work from 3:01 – 9:00 needs to be validated and/or possibly take place.
9:01 -11:59 “The Agreement” is the forgotten piece of any purchase, with many stakeholders either forgetting it needs to be done or not understanding the time it may take to complete it. If this is a complex project or purchase, this time may be lengthy -- not because procurement and legal want to make it difficult, but to mitigate as much risk as possible. This may seem unnecessary due to the belief by some that “nothing will go wrong,” which may be the case for a vast majority of purchases, but it only takes one major incident that makes mitigating risk in all agreements worth the effort.
12:00 Success! The Agreement is signed, purchase made, and implementation and work can begin.
At Delaware North, a global hospitality and entertainment company, we have increased our efforts for procurement to be involved as early as possible via a robust communication process with our operational leadership and mandatory RFPs for projects of a certain value.
