Let's Talk Procurement
Welcome to "Let's Talk Procurement" - the procurement podcast where Lukes 1 and 10 navigate the wild world of purchasing with a side of humour and a dash of dad jokes. 🛍️ Join Luke 1, the procurement prodigy, and Luke 10, the tender-hearted jokester, as they untangle the knotty world of supply chains and contracts, one laugh at a time. From negotiating deals to chasing down the best bulk discounts, these Lukes have it all covered – and yes, they'll probably throw in a few puns along the way. Take a break from the text books & join us on the journey to procurement enlightenment served with a smile and a sprinkle of procurement magic! 🌟✨
Feel free to get in touch with us on our socials or 2lukes1cip@gmail.com.
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this podcast are like coffee preferences – diverse and subject to change. The hosts may spill the beans on their thoughts, but they don't claim to be everyone's cup of tea. Listener discretion is advised. Remember, it's all in good fun and the only thing brewed here is a blend of entertainment and conversation with a hint of education. Sip responsibly! ☕🎙️
Let's Talk Procurement
S2.E23. The Real Work: What Procurement Professionals Actually Do Daily
We dive deep into what procurement professionals actually do day-to-day, breaking down misconceptions and revealing the strategic value behind the function. Sharing personal experiences, we explore how procurement is about far more than simply blocking progress or finding the cheapest price.
• Procurement isn't about delaying projects out of spite but conducting essential due diligence to protect companies financially and reputationally
• Supplier selection often involves working with stakeholders' preferred suppliers rather than always running formal tenders from scratch
• Contract negotiation requires commercial and legal understanding despite most procurement professionals not having formal legal training
• Best value doesn't mean lowest price - procurement aims to find the right quality at the right price without compromising what's important
• Stakeholder management and education takes up a significant portion of a procurement professional's time, often more than supplier engagement
• Typical daily activities include reviewing contracts, attending meetings, processing requisitions, and maintaining supplier relationships
• Public and private sector procurement differ significantly in approach to supplier selection and contractual terms
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Cya Later
so? So what you're saying is you don't think that what I've got you for your birthday is going to be good I don't think it exists, to be fair. You know, my birthday was like a month and a half ago now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it literally was over a month ago, wasn't this?
Speaker 1:my big one last year. Oh yeah, this is a birthday present for you for the next five years. That's very kind of you. I mean, it's only it's only worth it's not even. It's not even worth one year, but because it will probably take me so long to actually deliver it to you, yeah, then it will take five years. So, yeah, hope you enjoy it thank you, mate. I don't know. It's probably not even worth a live opening, to be honest. No, no, I I think, yeah, low expectations is good just like with the podcast.
Speaker 1:That's what I was about to say. And welcome to let's Talk Procurement, the only show you need to master the art of procurement, let's go. So welcome everyone today. I hope you enjoyed the intro because that's how we're doing things now. We're not starting as formal as we were. We're sort of fading in the chat whenever we remember to press record or whenever we're able to press record and not get cancelled because we we have been saying some, some earlier things, some cancellable some kinds of things yeah.
Speaker 1:So I just like, I just like the fading into the chatter, this sort of, yeah, the kind of um, you know, when you meet us in a pub, we don't straight away say the intro. That's what we're always trying to be, isn't it? Yeah, but we might say something cancelable in the first 30 seconds of saying hello in a pub yeah, yeah, and I think that's how you know it's going to be a good, a good pub sesh when there's a few, uh few, cancelable words exchanged.
Speaker 2:Do you want to shout out any pubs, any cracking names of pubs that you've got?
Speaker 1:Any particular favourites. There's a game called pub cricket which is where you have to. I think I don't remember what it is. I think it's like you score based on the number of limbs the name of the pub has. So it's like it's like if you I don't know if you saw so the the two kings, then you get eight points. Right, can we get? Can we make this a listener game? Can we get the listeners to send in? You know, maybe there's a pub called like the 12 octopuses or something, and then of course there's a pub called that.
Speaker 1:There probably is somewhere the five millipedes yeah, yeah or yeah, that would be good, or yeah, I just. I just want to know what the, what high, what high scores are there out there for pocket?
Speaker 2:can I give you a name? I'll give you a couple that I know and then you can give me my scores. Is that fair? Okay, alright, nice, brain, engage, let's go.
Speaker 1:King's Head none, zero, good start. Okay, is it king's head?
Speaker 2:none, zero, good start okay, um, um, the, the four blackbirds uh, oh god, wings, wings.
Speaker 1:Do wings count? I think wings count. So you've got two legs and two uh, wings on the limbs are they, would you not say? No, sounds like a googleable question. Are wings, limbs, arms legs, wings, flippers? These are all examples of limbs. Okay, so 16, then 16 points for that one, okay uh the royal oak none, what, nah, three branches don't count as limbs. Oh fucking hell, uh the bell there's a little little dangly bit that counts as a limb.
Speaker 2:How do you got that question before?
Speaker 1:No, zero again for that one, you're joking Rose and crown. Again zero.
Speaker 2:King George's leg. Sorry might have to repeat that king, king, king george's leg is that real pub?
Speaker 1:yeah, uh, one one, all right. So far.
Speaker 2:Uh, yeah, I don't know, uh the plow. So you've got 17 so far.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know the plough nah, zero right, go for one more, alright big fox and hounds ooh, a little plural in there throws you off, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:doesn't tell you how many hounds how many hounds?
Speaker 1:how many hounds are there? I think you can only reasonably assume that there are two hounds. How many hounds? How many hounds are there? Uh, I think you can only reasonably assume that there are two hounds yeah, that's fair um, so what's that? 12 okay one more sorry I've got one more bonus round, the three horseshoes hmm, if it's just the horseshoes, not the horses, though, I think you've got to have zero for that one as well why the logo's got a picture of a horse that's only got three legs uh, I think it's only the name.
Speaker 1:I think only the name is the the qualifier okay.
Speaker 2:Well, if anyone thinks they can beat my scores, let us know. That's quite interesting. Was it only a british thing, though? You know you're not gonna. I think so I don't know what pop culture in other, in other places, is like um the most I normally see is like an irish bar just propped up in the middle of like spain somewhere or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's just called irish pub or something. Yeah, how many legs does that have? Well, that will after a few Guinnesses. Very stereotypical of you. Yeah, that's what we are stereotypical. We love the stereotypes.
Speaker 2:So what's on your bulletin today then? I don't know how we got onto that, but we'll I'm going to say that was the bulletin.
Speaker 1:Okay, that was my update. So, listeners, send in your pubs with high cricket scores and the winner, oh go on no, go on.
Speaker 2:What are you going to promise to give and fail to deliver?
Speaker 1:The winner wins a 20-gram pouch of tobacco of tobacco?
Speaker 2:oh, we can deliver that. Yep, and it's ltp tobacco I mean, uh, yeah, yeah, ltp leaf ltp.
Speaker 1:That's us, that's our side hustle. You know they say businesses should have. You know different. You know, try and expand in different markets. Yeah, we're. We're going into the uh tobacco market, aren't we?
Speaker 2:so this is a way to promote our, our new product I, to be honest, I'm a bit you're kind of similar as well. I haven't had a shave in a while and my, my beard kind of looks a bit like tobacco's just been sellotaped on. Do you know?
Speaker 1:I mean there's someone's put super glue on your face and then thrown a load of tobacco at you yeah, that's kind of the vibe.
Speaker 2:It's not great, um, I think from my perspective. Look, let's just remind you, listeners, why you are listening to us in your ear, because obviously we've waffled about pubs and um getting cancelled before. We've even probably mentioned the word procurement other than in the intro, and this podcast right here is the only one you need. Maybe procurement says no if you feel like listening to procurement podcasts, but the only one you need to get to where you want to be in your procurement career. You know SIPs advice, career advice, general banter. You know insights to things that other people just don't give you Like they might read off a textbook Now fuck that. You know life's not all about people just don't give you Like they might read off a textbook Now fuck that. You know life's not all about textbooks. You can't just live by the book. You've got to think outside the box. You've got to use everything that God gave you to negotiate. So that's what we're all about, you know, with the good and the bad of procurement, yeah, and on the same lines.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and on the same lines. What should a procurement person, or what does a procurement person, do day to day.
Speaker 2:That's a great question. I think we should spend the next 20 minutes answering it. That is a great question. Yeah, well done. I can tell that your kind of SIPs modules are paying off now with this. You know strategic thinking that's going on in that, in that head of yours.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, well, I'm two modules in two modules passed out of my six uh, six of my sips so far. I think the next recording that we might do is the results, so that's become a become a tradition to reveal the results live. Um, I won't say anything about that one in this ep, but yeah, that should be coming soon my favorite bit about that is always the uh, the examiner feedback.
Speaker 2:Like they're absolute savages, aren't they? They're like, they're just so like blunt, of course, probably because I have to write so many of them, but they're like, yeah, they'll just be so cutthroat, and I think, if you know, if you want to hear us, um, go through some of luke's feedback, especially from the first one we unveiled live. I think that would, uh probably have you in stitches. So give us some love and let us know and, uh, drop us a message and we might, um, we might, unveil some of the insights to his feedback.
Speaker 1:It's pretty damn good, okay, the question was what things would happen day to day in the life of a human person what do we do, what do we actually do, what do we want to do and what do we really do?
Speaker 1:should we be open and honest about that. Yeah, yeah, uh, I think a little bit of, uh, a little bit of what's the word? Misconceptions? There's a few misconceptions out there about what we actually do. You know, you, you coined and copyrighted the phrase proc block, yes, so I think most people, maybe we should start by talking about the general misconceptions of what people think we do.
Speaker 1:Um, okay, so legally, by the way, if you, if anyone accepts me or you, says the word words or the phrase prop block, then they have to pay you five pence, don't they? That's true royalties, because the copyright agreement, yeah, yeah. So I think most people think we, we just sit around delaying things, right? Um, yeah, I don't know if, if their perception is that we delay on purpose or we just have extra processes to go through, that end up delaying things. But I think what would be helpful to say is that when a delay does occur due to something that we're doing it's not, you know, it's not like oh, we want to, we want to get you and want to slow you, slow this project down and make you miss deadlines it's because we've got some sort of due diligence or process that we need to follow that aims to protect the company, either in a financial sense or reputational sense, mainly, yeah Well, and that's why it's not out of just general generic spite.
Speaker 2:It could be if you've got an arsehole stakeholder who does it repeatedly.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, spite does build up a little bit, to be fair. Um, what I would say is a lot of stakeholders, people who are wanting to engage a third party, are working to, you know, project deadlines, tied deadlines, things like that, moving at a thousand miles an hour, and they're not always considerate of a procurement person's role and what we're actually doing. They kind of think, well, I'll give you a supplier and then you just sign a piece of paper that says we can buy from them and then that's it, job done. Yeah, and that's obviously far from the truth. And it's about educating the business to understand what, what it is we're doing and why we're doing it. And hopefully, you know, if we cause a delay the first time, then at least next time they know to engage us at an earlier time in the process, which is an age-old kind of, you know, procurement problem yeah, yeah, it's that sort of vicious cycle, isn't it sometimes, where you, you know, someone doesn't know that they should involve procurement.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so then they involve procurement too late and then they get stung, and they get stung, things get delayed. So the next time they try and avoid procurement which tries, which delays things even more, um, and starts a what's the phrase?
Speaker 2:vicious cycle yeah, very vicious if, if you're being honest, okay, how many of the suppliers that you work with relatively new suppliers should we say would you say that you've led the decision making for, for ie, done a I don't know, done a tender, done an RFI, RFQ and kind of you know, scored five different suppliers and put them against each other and then the business has kind of genuinely gone. Wow, thanks, Luke 10. You've really found the right supplier for us. Yeah, Out of your last 10, how many would you say you've done that for?
Speaker 1:out of the last 10. Sorry, I had to cough there. Out of the last 10, I would say one or two.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's a fair I think.
Speaker 1:I think that would be different if I worked in public sector, because the processes that you go through are kind of, you know, designed to, designed to be better at supplier selection and open the sort of horizons to, especially if it's open competition and there could be any supplier in the country in the world that could apply for this in this project, uh, whereas in the private sector it's it's more like oh, I worked with, I worked at this company previously and we use that supplier. I want to use them again yeah, yeah for sure and we use that supplier.
Speaker 2:I want to use them again, yeah, yeah for sure. And I think, I think a lot of what we then end up doing is working with those, you know, the businesses, the business people to understand if they've got a genuine need with this supplier, if that supplier is a valid supplier for us to work with because just because they've worked with them before does not mean that they are the right fit for our organization yeah, and then maybe bringing in some competition retrospectively to see, you know, also, and we've already got this supplier that can engage and, um, I guess quite, a, quite a bit of time is probably spent on that is is understanding where the business has found a potential new supplier and how they've got to where they've got to, and making sure they haven't made any promises that we're not going to sign off on.
Speaker 1:Basically, yeah, so. So that's, that's one element of it. I think another element of the supplier assessment would be the sort of background kind of checks into the finances, into the sort of, I suppose, sort of what you said in terms of if they said they've got a certain certification, um, then do they actually have that? Can they prove it? Or like insurance documentation as well. If we want them to have a certain level of insurance so that they don't go bust, then we'll shake that as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's the secondary part, isn't it? So obviously, the supplier selection. We want to be driving the supplier selection process, but either way a supplier has then been selected, that supplier needs to go through your general corporate due diligence, and that's where we support those kind of vetting documents and general information and understanding. You know, are they based in I know they're based in scotland or are they based in, uh, china, and then and then does that impact our business? You know, do we do? We want a long, a long flight to china every time we need to to go and visit with supplier sort of sort of thing. So you have to have those considerations and I think a lot of people don't understand why those checks are being done or don't really care. They just want their supplier and they want them engaged the next couple of days yeah for sure.
Speaker 1:No, I had an example recently where a project manager was annoyed at me for, um, doing these sort of checks into a supplier and I had to. I had to go back and say that would you rather your project starts a couple of weeks late or we use a supplier that can't fulfill what you need them to fill? You get two months into the project and have to start over again. Yeah well, you know, you get two months into the project and realize that their supply is actually leaking all of your, all of your data to somewhere, someone else. Right, they're not who they said they were. Um, I mean, it's probably unlikely, but it's worth doing the checks. It's our job, it's a part of our job. It's not you, it's a part of our job.
Speaker 2:It's not. We're part of teams that are there to protect the company, and I get that. Other people are there to deliver business for the company and that's their role, and we're there to support them. We're also there to protect them and protect the business. So, yeah, fully understand that. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think that's a key principle. Yeah, I think that's a key principle. It's good to expand on that, whereas we is going out, we're getting best value for, or that the money going out is going to the right people.
Speaker 2:basically, yeah, yeah, and a lot of people don't understand the benefit of reducing or managing your expenditure and I think a common misconception is that we would just look for the lowest price all of the time. And actually we don't look for the lowest price if it's going to compromise quality. If quality is what is important to the customer, right. If the customer just wants low price, then obviously we'll go for the lowest price. We would not compromise quality just to get a better deal. At least we shouldn't be doing it. I'm not saying every procurement professional doesn't just do that to get their own savings achieved, right. But the theory of it is that you go for the best fit supplier for your situation and your customer's situation and you can negotiate with a supplier on their price and not compromise quality, Like that is possible. You know you can reduce their markup um what the supplier is making from the deal. You can potentially increase the quantity you're buying to get a better price um without sacrificing that quality yeah, and it's.
Speaker 1:It's important to know, especially with, you know, the bloody cost of living going up, everything's more bloody expensive, isn't it with? In terms of the, the primary objective of, you know, every private sector company is to make money. Either you can sell your product for more or you can reduce your cost, right? Yeah, and reducing costs of third-party suppliers is going to be a massive help, especially when it comes to procurement of direct things, right?
Speaker 2:Ironically, I think procurement gets more respect and kind of kudos when the world is falling apart, so when times are tough and people do need to make savings to stay afloat, all of a sudden they're going well. Who the hell can help me get a good deal on this? Oh, there's the procurement guys. We we ignored when we were making shit tons of money, um, and then they'll come out and give us some you know a billion pound saving target for the year and and put all the pressure on us. But actually I think that works quite well for for us as a function to get recognition. It's when business is going really, really well and we're making you know great margins and shit ton of money. There's new customers coming out of our backside. Is that? Why would you want to slow that down with doing extra due diligence?
Speaker 1:that's that's when you have the real battle yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe this could slide in later in the app, but we well, in the UK especially, we don't really get commission on savings, whereas salespeople get commission on savings. The argument to that is if you were going to get commissions on savings, you would probably get a lower base salary. Yeah, so where do you stand on? Do you think we should get commissions on savings in the same way that sales get commissions on sales?
Speaker 2:I don't see why not. But it has to be savings and obviously, if you're listening and you do get commission on savings, let us know. I mean you know we can get you on for an episode or get some insights, because I think it is an interesting theory, I think having it would be great. It would enable, it would encourage people to actually, you know, get real stuck in and and really go at their, their savings and deals. But the problem with it is you might then start compromising quality and not caring, in the same way that a salesperson might win a deal and then they'll disappear and they've got their commission and they don't care about whether the deal is delivered. You know, a procurement person might cut all the costs out and, you know, strip their third parties back to the basics and then disappear and get their commission as well.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so it's sort of maybe it's maybe it kind of plays into another principle that I suppose maybe this is unfair, but I've never worked in sales, so I suppose we're sort of meant to be fairly not, not not really impartial, but we're sort of meant to be what's the phrase I'm looking for? Like we ethical, is that the phrase I'm looking for? Like we ethical, is that the phrase I'm looking for?
Speaker 1:I think so yeah as in we, we're always trying to um, think about the, the process and the right way to do things according to the company policy, whereas sales is sort of more just let's get this deal over the line. Whereas I guess, I guess, guess, you could say or at least a perception would be that, oh, procurement are just trying to push this deal over the line because they get commission on savings. So there's that added pressure, that added sort of influence on you, whereas the influences that you should have should just be to the betterment of the company's position.
Speaker 2:If I was going to get making up a number here, if I was going to get £10,000 commission for onboarding with supplier because we're spending X amount of money, would I be tempted to score them better than I would if I wasn't making commission, you know, would I be tempted to get their onboarding done quicker and maybe skip part of the onboarding process or whatever.
Speaker 2:And I I, the honest answer is obviously it should be a no, um. But in a commission-based world that people will will fall to those temptations, especially on bigger deals, bigger commissions, yeah, um. So I think, going back to the, the original question, like well, you know what? What do we do on the daily? So I think supplier selection is not a, it's not necessarily a daily activity, but you probably have a couple of suppliers or a couple of needs within your area that you're then working on ongoing. So you know, you're, you might have identified a supplier, but you you've then got week, a few weeks or a few months of engaging them, looking at the onboarding, discussing the contract, discussing what we're buying. So it's never really huge volumes. It's more consistent work with a select few suppliers that you are onboarding.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and obviously that kind of threshold as to where do you want to do that assessment Like there's a good point from Ed in the procurement says no. I think it was Ed who said if you're doing a negotiation with a supplier, it's good to look into their financial position because you might realize that the deal that you're putting in place is going to double their revenue or something. Yeah, but then if it's a smaller contract that you know you've not got a lot of kind of power in the negotiation, you might not, or, you know, maybe it's just a sort of transactional thing. It's important to think about where each kind of purchase fits into your matrix, which is a nice link, smooth link. Again today I've got this podcasting stuff on the lock, right it's only taken like what?
Speaker 2:what is it?
Speaker 1:40 episodes I think, yeah, 45 or something. Yeah, uh, to almost forgot what I was going to say, that to negotiation, um, contract negotiation, and maybe again a difference between public and private sector. Uh, I seem to be. I'd say contract negotiation is a pretty high majority of of my job. Um, I don't know if you feel the same, but I seem to be always, you know, either negotiating a contract with a supplier you know that uses my company's standard terms or reviewing supplier terms or something like that, and I always find that a bit of a weird one because I'm not a legal person. I don't have a background in legal or illegal kind of education, so the extent to what I can review in a contract is normally kind of commercials and things that would relate practically to the service. And then, when it comes to legal things like indemnities, warranties, conditions of contract, I feel like I need a bit more help from legal team on those ones. Do you does that? It match your experience, or have you got more, more competency around that?
Speaker 2:I think it's a.
Speaker 2:It's a reflection of where you're at in your career.
Speaker 2:To be fair, I think through repetition and probably ongoing exposure to legal resource and and different businesses, different contracts, you probably get more comfortable with things like warranties, liabilities and what, what is realistic for the kind of contract you're engaging with. But equally, yeah, I do agree that more often than not you're expected to go into these discussions and negotiations especially early on and probably don't have any kind of knowledge or training or anything in some instances which can make it tough. But similarly I'd say it depends on your organization, because some organizations are so big that they will just give you a terms and you're accepting them. If you're selling software as a service, you might just send a hyperlink and that's it. Like you know, they accept their terms when they use it. If it's professional services, then you've got a different angle for the kind of work you're providing. So it does differ. But obviously I know where you and I both kind of sit in the spectrum of different companies and things like that and obviously we're quite contractually driven in our roles, but I'm not sure everybody is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when I worked in public sector it wasn't like that at all. You just sort of you. You used the framework terms and conditions and a condition of a supplier applying for the contract or or responding to the tender was that they, they agreed to be bound by the, the contractual terms of the framework right, normally, which, normally, which is normally a ccs framework for those who are outside the UK. That's kind of authority that sets up framework agreements, um, and I think they probably try to be fair to both sides of the supplier and the and the no, I don't know about that.
Speaker 2:That's, that's a bit of uh, that's a bit of bias for me there. I think, having worked in the in in the sort of public sector, I think I think what's what's happened is because, because it's the government, everybody just goes. Well, it's the government's terms and conditions, like we've got to respect them. Yeah, the bigger the deal, the more you can. You can negotiate a little bit, but you have to have practical and real reasons for negotiating, um, whereas kind of private sector to private sector is a bit more of a wild west. You can kind of negotiate on anything you want and just try your shot. Yeah, yeah Would I say it's fair, they're not ridiculous. But the general terms are published online so you can always see a copy of them and kind of. But some of the conditions are quite onerous on the companies fair enough.
Speaker 1:No, that's, that's good that you've got the perception of. I mean now, now I'm now in the private sector, you know part of teams occasionally responding to biz. I can see that that it's not. It's not. My perception of it was just, you know, they, they, they want to kind of accept our terms and that's it, whereas a lot of it goes into a lot of kind of the. What I'm trying to say is the terms that are in the main contract will often get passed down to the subcontractors right, which might affect the price of the suppliers, which would then affect the price that you're then putting forward to the to the government client um, yeah, so even even something basic like the government might say every every six months you have to provide us, or every year you have to provide us, with a copy of your emissions report.
Speaker 2:You know your carbon emissions and then you have to show evidence for how you've worked it out, and then you have to provide your sustainability plan and shows what you're doing to reduce those emissions for this particular agreement. But that's fine, right, that's a good policy, it makes sense. And then we pass it down to our subcontractors. Fine, it makes sense. Um, and then we pass it down to our subcontractors fine, you know, no worries, but the subcontractors have to then put in resource to make sure we're doing that. They have to make sure that they hit it and send it to us.
Speaker 2:You know, in 11 months time, and then we, we've then got a resource that's on standby to them and it's added cost, and every single obligation that you're then putting on the supply chain is a cost. Whether, whether it's a direct or indirect cost, it's still going to ultimately affect the customer who's buying. So, yeah, I mean, negotiation is definitely a big part of the role. I think, day to day, probably a fair bit of that going on. One thing I would say is stakeholder engagement management. Education probably takes up quite a large part of my day, and I don't know if that's the same for you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sure it is. Maybe it's more like 70 30 split of internal stakeholder relationship engagement management, whatever the latest turn is, and doing the same thing to the with the suppliers um, because they wouldn't have worked with especially new suppliers, they wouldn't have worked with us and they wouldn't know our processes. They're they're interested in how quickly they can get paid right. I've got to sort of explain where we have to do this and then this and then this, and then you can get your money what?
Speaker 2:what I find is interesting is I'd probably say 80 of it for me is internal, 20 is probably external in in the sense that when I'm having meetings with suppliers, it's often their sales people who want to win the business, they want to progress, they want to get on boarded, they want to prove themselves. So they're keen to get everything answered. You know you could send them a daunting onboarding questionnaire and they're just going yep, we'll get on to that and we'll get you know. We'll get Dave from this bit of the business to answer these questions and we'll come back to you as soon as possible. You ask the business to fill in a form to say why they want to engage a supplier. Oh, my god, you know they start crying. There's tears, there's documents getting thrown across the room.
Speaker 1:It's carnage um, yeah, yeah, and it's quite often as well like either can't you do, can't you do it, or I'll try and find someone to do it yeah, classic, classic and it's a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:Then is can we have an update on on the onboarding? Can we have an update on the contract? Can we have an update on the pricing? Can we have an update on the purchase order? You know, um, or or when something's gone wrong, can you tell me how we get out of this contract? Do we have to pay the supplier if we don't want to buy it anymore? Yeah, um, you know they always need it now, but then when we return the favor and ask for questions, it's it's really hard to get answers and I think, obviously, if we take accountability for the third parties being brought in or being engaged, then it is only fair that we are feeding into the business to give updates on where those suppliers are in the process, but it does feel like it takes up a lot of time yeah, I would agree with that and it's it can.
Speaker 1:It can be frustrating and I suppose this is when you can, you can sort of link in more technical knowledge about are you as a procurement person aligned to a category of spend? So you know software, hardware, it transformation, you know professional services, whatever category you want to call it, in which I don't know if you really get as much ability to influence that stakeholder knowledge long term versus sector or business partnering aligned, where you have a set of kind of, I suppose, customers in the business and then you work. Know you have a set of kind of, I suppose, customers in the business, yeah, and then you work for those customers, no matter what they want, whether they want kind of, uh, training or hardware or professional services consultancy. But the drawback to to that side of it is then you're sort of a jack of all trades and you're expected to kind of have a detailed understanding of a lot of different things yeah, yeah, you are, and I think that's that's a big difference between direct procurement and indirect procurement.
Speaker 2:Um, in indirect, you normally have a category and you're procuring for, you know, your organization. Direct, you're normally driven by the spend of your customer. So if your customer's spending 50 million pounds a year with you, you're managing that 50 million pounds for the customer and whatever they, you know, whatever they want or whatever your company needs to deliver that, the program for that company you're sitting across. And that's the bit that can get, you know, multi-layered and kind of complicated. But yeah, they're two different avenues and they probably have slightly different, different stakeholders and different routes of engagement. Um, do you spend a lot of time doing requisitions, raising purchase requisitions, talking about purchase orders, anything like that?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, quite a bit um, just in terms of, uh, you know, using, using those sort of um payment systems. Like I can't remember the general term for them is, uh, no, I can't remember what the general term for them is. Uh, no, I can't remember what the general term is. Um, but yeah, those sort of systems like like sap, um, where it's sort of everything's in a, in a kind of system and you've got to approve, you've got to give the procurement approval for this, this thing, right, yeah, um, and also, I'd say that's where conversations with suppliers happen as well. They want to know what's happened to their PO, you know when are they going to receive it, when are they going to be able to invoice and kind of get paid, basically, yeah, well, that's what they care about, isn't it?
Speaker 1:It's all about the money, money, money 100% Okay.
Speaker 2:so I feel like we've covered quite a bit there, but I'm kind of interested in what your day would look like. So we've kind of gone through the theory of it. But it's just turned 9am, luke Tennant's rocked up to the office aka sat up in his bed bed, he's got his laptop on and he's just logged in 859.
Speaker 1:Alarm turned over 1030 shower.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it's 9 am. What are you, what are you kind of doing for the day, what's your first?
Speaker 1:first sort of thoughts first thoughts would be um have any fires happened overnight?
Speaker 1:in your house or if, if, if my house is the area of spend that I'm responsible for, then, yes, I see it as a house. Wow, beautiful, no, uh, so. So at 901 I I take my first break of the day. Yeah, hard, uh, hard, hard earned work. Um, no, no, so. So basically, I think it's it's a mix of, um, kind of checking what's coming through an email. You know, you seem to get a lot of requests from people about how do we do this, or where can I find that, or yeah, um, yeah, maybe, maybe someone's been been working late and they've, they've sent you a contractor review. Um, someone's asking about onboarding of suppliers. So a lot of different. As, uh, as was mentioned in the previous episode procurement gods episode, I think we do a lot of different things. So in the morning you've got to log on see what activities you've got kind of set out in front of you.
Speaker 2:Basically, you don't like, look at your calendar and see what's ahead for the day, or just no?
Speaker 1:you, just, you just wait until that little, that little meeting pops up realize you prioritize something else yeah, no, of course, of course um no, of course, of course, um, so, so, okay.
Speaker 2:So I would say for me, wake up, log in and then check the calendar, see what's going on for the day. Typically I would say number of emails have come in. I try not to actually go straight into emails. I try and save emails to the back end of the day because otherwise I'll get caught into stuff. That's not that productive. I will look at my let's say, look at my calendar, and I'll see what's what's on the horizon or what I've been working on.
Speaker 2:If I've been working on a big contract, I might have some time blocked out to review the contract or, um, catch up with a stakeholder on the contract. So, um, I do time block, so I do block out time for myself to do those kind of those, those things where you don't need to be showing online all the time, if that makes sense. You know you need to maybe read a contract or review it and you stick to that, do you? Yes, yeah, which is relatively new. Actually I used to. If someone put a meeting in, I'd probably then try and rearrange my own book time to review something, but now I've just said no, I'm busy, and actually I've been doing that for about four months, just before the turn of the year, and I've noticed a difference in just my ability to get things done. Because I'm focusing on it's easy to forget that actually the reviewing of the contract or the negotiation of the price and your research into the negotiation is more important than just talking to the stakeholder about what you're going to be doing. Um, you know, while helping someone raise a purchase record, some at some of the mundane shit that you might get get put in your diary. So, um, yeah, I normally try and get a priority that I want to achieve for the day. I'll figure out what that is, you know. Is it a contract? Is it? Is it getting getting a particular email back to somebody? Is it, um, chasing some supplies for contracts, whatever? Um, and I'll try and tackle that early on in the morning. Then the inevitable calls happen.
Speaker 2:So, teams, meetings and all of that good stuff with catching up on where our sector is. You know what? What savings have we been delivered? Maybe it might be a savings review, it might be a team review, it might be looking at a particular supplier and giving a status update to the stakeholders, could be anything like that, and more often than not. You have two or three of those, if not a few more, in in in the day, which you know, at 30, 30 minutes to an hour, a slot can eat up your day quite quickly. Um, go on to our, our uh, platform of choice, for you know, requisitions and things like that, and, and if there's any assigned, I'll do my reviews and query them, approve them, do what needs to be done. Do any documents need signature? I'll look to make sure they've been fully governed and sign them off, and then I'll look at my emails. Yeah, and if yeah, you know, spend a bit of time at the end of the day going through emails, getting responses out and then shut the laptop, start again tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Nice. At what point do you go and play golf with the suppliers?
Speaker 2:Well, I can't play golf, Crazy golf, yeah, I can do that. Oddly enough, I would say I don't meet suppliers too often. The way everything's gone in terms of digitalization, I mean we talk to a supplier and they're going. Well, our sales guys in glasgow and then our legal persons in manchester, um, they'll ask us where we are and we're in london and it's like we might as well just do it on teams then. Yeah, it's only normally if there's a serious issue or we happen to be in fairly close proximity that we have those physical meetings or some sort of, you know, quarterly, half year, annual review type meeting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, when you would, you'd go and meet them in person, which I think is a shame.
Speaker 2:I think we should be doing more of that stuff in person, because I think it's more valuable than, you know, a half an hour people rushing to get on to the next thing yeah, I have um have an experience where there's a sales sales lead that I quite liked, when I was speaking uh to him over uh conference calls you know like teams and also when I was speaking to him on um on phone. He was a guy got on quite well with him. I think it was nine months later I met him for the first time in person and my whole perspective of him changed completely. Do you know, have you ever seen Matilda? Were you too young for that? Too young for that?
Speaker 2:Okay, so Matilda's dad is, or step step dad, whatever he is, was is a no actual dad played by danny devito. And, uh, he's a used car salesman and he will literally sell like a broken car to a family and it'll charge double the price, right, he's quite well known for being a con artist salesperson, right? And when I met this bloke in person, his body language was off is. He was kind of sketchy. He wanted to. He wanted to disappear for a cigarette or like vaping the toilet. He was trying to speak to random people in the company to solicit business and it was like whoa, his attitude to us as a, as a customer, is completely different to how it is on a on a quick call, yeah and uh, yeah, that was just a real eye-opener. So I agree, I think it's a shame and I think we should be meeting more in person because we understand what it is we're buying and who we're buying from there you go, some top tips, as well as an explanation of uh of what we do and matilda's dad so I think there's been a good comprehensive overview of uh of what happens in the day of the day of a life yeah, I think.
Speaker 2:So I think, um, I think what we might have could have discussed a bit more with, probably, savings and and how we go about trying to nail those, because obviously a typical day you might not focus on it, but you have got that focus over the weeks and months. So, um, maybe that'll be for the next one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, we could do a savings episode yeah, and for those listeners that want to support us, follow us, talk to us. You can, they can, they can text us, can't they?
Speaker 1:They are allowed to. They can text us. They can follow our social, can't they? They are allowed to. They can text us. They can follow our social singular of Instagram. We've given up on the. I've given up on the Twitter, but the Instagram is. Let's underscore, talk, underscore procurement at instacom. I don't know if it's at instacom, it just sounded right. We have an email address, don't we? So would you like to explain what the email address is?
Speaker 2:2lucs 1sip at gmailcom, that's 2lucs 1sip at gmailcom, and sip is c-i-ip, because we're all about sips. Okay, uh, on a thought, what do you, um twitter and your girlfriend have in common?
Speaker 1:they? They both something about an ex they're both now exes.
Speaker 2:Hey, oh, mate, I feel bad for that, actually your face my heart hurts, face just dropped um, elon, uh, elon is.
Speaker 1:Is uh playing with them both? Wait what?
Speaker 2:what? That's a bit weird, because is he? Would that be legal?
Speaker 1:wait, how old do you think I am?
Speaker 2:I don't know, mate, you're too young for matilda, so, but somehow old enough to work. I don't know how that works. Um, yeah, yeah, I don't know. I'll think about that one. But uh, on that lovely note, we'll uh see you in the next one sounds good.
Speaker 1:All right, see you later. See you later.
