Johnnie Moore

Procurement

Johnnie Moore

Johnnie Moore

I’m Johnnie Moore, and I help people work better together

Tony Goodson is back on the stump. His postings from inside a corporate (where he’s been for just three months) continue to amuse and enlighten. His rant against corporate procurement rings bells with me.

Our procurement has been outsourced. I contacted our contact. I emailed him a price I had agreed with the only supplier in Australia for this software product. He emailed my email to their outsourced software supplier, yes you got it, an outsource of an outsource! And yes that means the price is doubled or squared! And even though I’d given them both the price and contact name, number and email, they managed to come back with a price significantly higher than the one I told them they could get it for!!

That takes some beating.

I’ve several times experienced the rigours of organised procurement and I think if often sucks. If you grasp sand too tightly, you end up losing more of it through your fingers. Some tendering processes squeeze out the scope for ingenuity. They confuse rule-following with excellence. I worked for a government agency a year ago helping them procure market research according to EU tendering rules… what a palaver, an enormous amount of time spent ticking boxes instead of a more subtle human process of engaging in dialogue. The result: a costly process and an inflexible contract. I wouldn’t go so far as Tony in labelling all procurement people as idiots; I am sure some do their job well by allowing some flexibility and humanity into the process – but as in so much of business, excessive efforts at control can be completely counter-productive.

Share Post

More Posts

So now I’m published

I popped over to Kogan Page yesterday to pick up my own copy of Beyond Branding. (It’s quite handy that my publisher is a 10

Skype

I’ve been experimenting with Skype software that let’s you make phone calls over the net. Quite impressive and completely free (for the time being). I’ve

There may be trouble ahead

I’m planning some changes to my web presence in the next few days which are probably going to be disruptive, so here’s a warning and

First post

This is the first new posting to this Weblog at its new home JohnnieMoore.com. I’ve transferred to a new, faster server and decided this was

Leaving

I decided a while back that I wanted to move out of London. I’ve lived in this city for over 25 years and I think

Resurfacing

You may have noticed a long silence here. I was travelling in Australia and then came back to the UK and changed location. I’ve moved

Nine years…

I generally avoid blogging about how I’m blogging but I will indulge myself today, as it’s my ninth anniversary of writing this blog. It started

John Ptak

I was very sad to learn that John Ptak the husband of my friend Patti Digh, has been struck with cancer. Patti’s response to this,

Opening the proof

We’ve almost finished getting our new book available on Lulu the print-on-demand service. This little video is just me drooling over the final proof. It’s

Summer Season…

When I moved to Cambridge last year, my dream was to get a place where I could have people stay. All through the winter I

More Updates

Emotional debt

Releasing the hidden costs of pent up frustrations

Aliveness

Finding the aliveness below the surface of stuck

Johnnie Moore

Top brand, poor performer

According to this ISR report top brands underperform financially and have poor levels of employee engagement. They have compared companies rated by Business Week as having the highest brand value

Johnnie Moore

What brand are you?

Thanks to Matt Tucker at Smith Associates for telling me about What Brand Are You. It strikes me that lots of companies waste money on superficial rebranding exercises and I

Johnnie Moore

Complexity from Simplicity

Two nice videos exploring how complexity emerges from simple interactions. (Click here if you can’t see the embedded clips.) Complexity depends on how connected the parts are to each other.

Johnnie Moore

Lame hotels

Great post by Doc Searls: Imagine going to the sink shower or toilet in your hotel room and being told water will cost you $14.95 per day. And that you’ll