Do You Do Purchasing?
Let’s have a quiz.
The first question is straightforward: What is buying, and do you do it?
The answer is simple: you as a private person or business need something, go out, find it, pay, and get back with what you need.
That’s what we all do every day or maybe a bit more seldom, but since barter was replaced by commodity money and then by actual coins there is not a single individual or entity that hasn’t done it.
Well done, let’s move to the next level.
Now a trickier question: what is purchasing, and do you do it?
What do you reckon? Same thing, but named differently?
Wikipedia gives the following answer: purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals.
Sounds familiar, but as a small or medium enterprise you don’t really have a process to acquire something to accomplish your goal; you just pick up a phone or open an internet page, pull your credit card or transfer the money, and get stuff you need, when you discover that it’s missing.
Alright, we let it slip and move to the next, the most difficult level.
And the question here is: what is procurement, and do you do it?
Wikipedia helps with the definition again: procurement is the process of finding and agreeing to terms, and acquiring goods, services, or works from an external source, often via a tendering or competitive bidding process.
C’mon quiz authors, of course, we don’t do it. That’s the game big guys play.
We are sad to say, that you’ve just lost. Not a prize in our quiz, unfortunately, we didn’t offer any, but in making your company more successful and profitable.
Of course, you do purchasing, you said it yourself and your process is almost the same as in buying.
Of course, you do procurement, think of all the cases when you found some time to send a request for quotation to two distributors and picked the cheaper one.
You just never realised it and never thought about the best and most efficient way to do it, and of course, you never considered hiring a specialist who knows this all, this is really expensive and in the end, only corporations that can afford to invest can achieve savings.
This is a bit disappointing to hear because we are very much into saving money (blame it on our German background) and we would very much like to help, because now when you realised that you do purchasing and procurement you can’t close your eyes and not do it right. So, as a starting point try visiting Economies of Scale for You , a community of businesses in a similar situation, businesses that can’t afford to have a procurement department and don’t have a purchasing volume that might interest manufacturers. Together they gain the purchasing power and #EoS4U takes on the buyer’s work: finding suppliers and agreeing to terms, acquiring goods on their behalf via negotiations or a tendering or competitive bidding process, and delivering them. That’s one of the most cost-efficient ways to do your procurement properly, save money, get right products at a right price, and be proud that also this part of your business is handled professionally.
We wish you a lot of success with your improved purchasing.