Procurement Management

Explore why to buy, outsource, or build, using quick method and NPV analyses. Identify purchase types and classifications, and how procurement mitigates risk, including construction and engineering items.

Evaluate whether to buy or outsource versus building in-house by assessing financial viability, proprietary or patented know-how, and alignment with business strategy.

Explore build or buy decisions by comparing lease and purchase options using payback period and net present value, including cash flows, discounting, and qualitative considerations.

Explore the classification of items and purchases in procurement management, including shelf, customized, built-to-order items, and goods, services, and hybrid contracts, with operational and capital purchase distinctions.

Classify items into standard, customized, built-to-order, and special purpose, while distinguishing raw materials, consumables, bought outs, and services such as operational and project-oriented outsourcing.

Explore how procurement mitigates risk, including secondary and residual risks, and map them with risk registers and impact and origin maps across procurement phases.

Learn configuration management in procurement, including identification, status accounting, and verification and audit; document changes and issues with change and issue logs, and manage supplier changes to implement them.

Explore vertical and horizontal integration as growth strategies that expand product offerings or reduce dependencies through acquisitions, in-house manufacturing, outsourcing, and distribution. Understand these approaches cut costs and increase control.

Evaluate when to internalize resources or outsource by weighing search and transaction costs against strategic advantages and core competencies. Leverage market efficiencies from freelancing platforms to meet critical service levels.

Explore how work packages streamline procurement operations by coordinating with projects and departments, using the work breakdown structure, resource breakdown structure, and resource calendar, plus change management.

Explore the work breakdown structure by defining deliverables and work packages, building a hierarchical, group-based WBS with unique identifiers and practical examples.

Understand the resource breakdown structure and its correspondence to the work breakdown structure. See how internal and external resources—items, services, or personnel—are procured per work package using BOQ and BOM.

Explore how the resource calendar links work packages to a timeline, detailing procurement items, due dates, and inspection considerations to ensure on time delivery.

Receive a change request or notification and assess impact on time, cost, and approvals. Collaborate with decision makers, update documents, notify suppliers, and monitor changes.

Develop skills in the three point estimate for procurement by calculating optimistic, most likely, and pessimistic costs, using beta distribution (PERT) and triangular distribution, and practicing with the Excel sheet.

Explore market conditions, the reasons to scout for new suppliers, supplier listing, supply chain conditions, and supplier evaluation techniques like screening, scoring, weighted scoring, and selection criteria.

Explore market conditions such as sole source, single source, and oligopoly. Use central supplier databases and ratings to guide procurement decisions and supplier selection.

Explore how geographic distribution, from local to international, shapes procurement lead times, paperwork, and costs, and analyze how layers of intermediaries affect supply chain risk and cost in procurement management.

Explore three supplier evaluation techniques: screening, scoring, and weighted scoring to filter, rank, and select suppliers using criteria like ISO 9001, annual revenue, years in business, and after sales service.

Evaluate suppliers using factors like business size, production volume, primary versus secondary offerings, financial capacity, and past experience to ensure reliable delivery and quality.

Assess supplier options by evaluating client references, repeat orders, intellectual property rights, licensing, technical competence, production capacity, warranty, after-sales service, management practices, certifications, and lifecycle costs.

Discover the differences between organized and unorganized markets, focusing on product identification, pricing, margins, distribution, warranties, and risk through real-world apparel, electronics, and China-sourced goods.

Define contracts and their constituents, compare with agreements, explore fixed price, cost plus, and time and materials, assess environment effects on choice, and review letter, unilateral, and bilateral contract documents.

Explore what makes a contract legally binding, including rights, obligations, representations, and capable parties with delegated authority, and how writing requirements and governing law shape validity and remedies.

Identify the three elements of a valid contract—agreement, intention to be bound, and consideration—and explain offers, acceptance, validity, and unilateral contracts under Irish law.

Explore sale and purchase contracts, including money as consideration, types of sale versus agreement to sell, and the three enforceability conditions: acceptance, consideration, and written memorandum.

Explain how possession and transfer of property diverge, identify when ownership and risk pass, and outline rules for specific versus uncertain goods and reservation of title.

Explore contracting arrangements, including fixed price, cost plus, and time and materials, with subtypes, extra and excess items, and key advantages and risks for buyers and sellers.

Explore the three project environments—predictive, just-in-time/iterative, and adaptive/agile—and their influence on procurement activities and contracting arrangements.

Explore contract documents in procurement, including letters of intent, unilateral and bilateral contracts. Learn how purchase orders, general supply conditions, open purchase orders, and memoranda of understanding shape agreements.

Learn how growth meets inflation-driven cost pressures and why scaling—through new revenue streams or market expansion—drives substantial revenue, while cautioning against missteps.

Master standard terms and conditions in purchase contracts, including boilerplate terms, delivery terms, limitation of liability, incoterms, and the technical specifications and annexes that accompany contracts.

Clarify the contract terms from scope of supply to price, payment milestones, and delivery timelines. Enforce quality criteria, warranties, installation, after-sales support, change handling, and dispute resolution.

Explore incoterms and the transfer of liability in global trade, focusing on EXW, FOB, CHF (cost, insurance, freight), DAP, DDU, and DDP and their cost implications.

Explore how technical specifications and annexures define product build, materials, performance, and quality criteria in procurement. Understand progress reporting, site visits, and third-party involvement to ensure clear communication.

Explore the procurement process and its flow of activities, from preparing prerequisites to managing stakeholders, detailing contract administration implications, and applying earned value management to track progress.

Define the scope of supply or statement of work to clarify the purchase. Float an RFI to explore market offerings, then choose between RFP, bid, or RFQ.

Identify internal and external stakeholders and build a stakeholder register to track name, contact, location, power, and type; understand how project-based, matrix, and functional structures shape procurement decisions and authority.

Classify stakeholders as negative, unaware, neutral, supportive, and cheerleading, then use authority, RAM, and RACI matrices to map power and gather inputs from relevant sources.

Explore core activities of the purchasing process, including RFQ/RFP/IFB, bidder conferences, scope updates, bid evaluation, shortlisting, negotiations, due diligence, and contract award.

Explain sipoc, supplier input process output customer, and show how to draft a flow and decompose a procurement process from purchase requisition to goods received note and close procurement.

Learn how to administer contracts beyond boilerplate terms by updating scopes with addendums, handling incompleteness, aligning incentives, and addressing sustainability, principal-agent issues, moral hazard, and risk throughout procurement management.

Learn earned value management (EVM) to monitor project progress with BAC, EV, AC, PV, CV, SV, CPI, and SPI, and forecast using EAC, ETC, and TCPI.

Explore utility consumption and diminishing utility with budget examples from bikes to cars, and use the burn test to buy within means and save money.

Master fundamentals of risk management in procurement, including iron triangle concepts, risk identification and risk register, risk assessment with qualitative and quantitative approaches, eight risk responses, and business continuity plan.

Define risk as an uncertain event with positive or negative impact, examine its probability, triggers, and monetary effects within the iron triangle of time, cost, and quality, and risk management.

Identify risks through broad stakeholder input and brainstorming, assign risk owners, map triggers, assess probability and impact, maintain a risk register, and review residual and secondary risks.

Identify and assess procurement risks by qualifying and quantifying them using probability, impact, and acceptance thresholds to determine risk scores and contingency reserves.

Identify and implement eight risk responses for threats—avoidance, transference, mitigation, and acceptance—and four for opportunities—sharing, enhancing, exploiting, and rejecting—while understanding risk-reward ratios.

Navigate the dynamic risk management framework with ongoing risk identification, assessment, and responses, and learn how to trigger and implement a business continuity plan during major disruptions.

Introduces the Kraljic matrix to classify items into non-critical, leverage, strategic, and bottleneck based on supply risk and profit impact, with ERP-driven automation and collaboration strategies.

Explore the three procurement cost buckets—search costs, inventory costs, and transaction costs—and learn how order quantity affects costs, from supplier search to contract, storage, and cash flow.

Learn how the economic order quantity balances transaction costs and holding costs to determine optimal order quantity, using the EOQ formula, demand rate, and real-world cost considerations.

Explore the WACC concept, debt-to-equity dynamics, and tax shields, highlighting balance sheets, cost of debt and equity, and the pursuit of an optimum debt-to-equity ratio.

Balance stock loss and outages by applying service level agreements to determine optimum inventory and minimum stocking levels using the newsvendor model and safety stock.

Compare FOQ and FOI reordering, and apply minimum stock, fill quantity, lead time, and EOQ concepts to optimize inventory and service levels.

Explore how incremental localization builds a resilient supply chain by validating market demand, establishing anchor investments, and developing hard and soft capabilities, supported by Pestel framework factors and just-in-time principles.

Master procurement finance by analyzing the balance sheet, current assets and current liabilities, accrual accounting, and working capital trends to optimize liquidity across the business cycle.

Compute and interpret the business cycle by calculating DPO, DIO, and DSO to derive the cash conversion cycle, and explore just-in-time inventory concepts in a public company example.

Analyze working capital by turnover of receivables, payables, and inventory to gauge efficiency and liquidity; evaluate cash discounts like 2% 15 net 45 to decide if early payment saves costs.