Introduction to Procurement

Understand how procurement adds value beyond price by managing total cost of ownership, life-cycle costs, mitigating risk, and ensuring reliable service through supplier collaboration and innovation.

Master the five common stages of procurement from planning to managing. Learn to analyze the supply market, engage stakeholders, negotiate contracts, and realize value.

Distinguish needs from wants through internal needs analysis, gathering stakeholder insights via surveys, interviews, and workshops. Define must-haves versus nice-to-haves to shape requirements, scope, and procurement strategy.

Identify organizational needs and draft requirements; analyze product or service fit with a complete profile, spend and total cost of ownership to guide supplier engagement.

Master stakeholder engagement by communicating procurement strategy and using the ID cube model—issue, data, question—to describe problems, review data, and build open consensus.

Learn to use different question types to elicit thoughts, establish rapport with stakeholders, and drill down with probing, leading, and funnel questions to gain clarity.

Map stakeholders using the power–interest matrix to tailor communication and secure support while reducing resistance. Assess their positions, power sources, and drivers of change to guide targeted engagement in procurement.

Analyze direct and indirect spending, reconcile purchase orders, invoices, and out of contract spending through three way reconciliation, and use spend insights to forecast demand and curb maverick spending.

Profile the supply market to understand its characteristics and movements, guiding your proactive market engagement and stakeholder interactions for better procurement outcomes.

Profile the supply market through four steps—structure and scope, capacity and capability, trends and risks—while analyzing the supply base, cost drivers, and supplier relationships for procurement.

Apply the five forces analysis to assess supplier and buyer power, rivalry, new entrants, and substitutes, guiding a proactive market engagement and sourcing strategy.

Exploit high buying power to secure prices and fixed contracts while assessing supply market power; diversify by sourcing alternative suppliers or modes; balance when both approaches fit your needs.

Develop a market engagement strategy by analyzing your sourcing history and objectives, then use a two-factor matrix of supply risk and profit impact to choose strategic, bottleneck, or non-critical approaches.

Identify sourcing options, evaluate current suppliers, and conduct market research to benchmark, trial new products, or form cross-functional collaborations to develop a robust sourcing strategy.

Prioritize social procurement by engaging local suppliers and applying supplier selection criteria that consider environmental sustainability to deliver tangible community and business benefits.