Global Leaders in Procurement & Negotiations (PSCMInstitute.com)
If you’re in procurement, the people sitting across the negotiation table from you are spending ***10X the amount of time in training that you are.*** Let that sink in. No, really. Let that stew for a while. Yet that’s the reality. Salespeople have better systems, tools, data, market data, training, and more resources, personnel, and […]
The 10X Problem in Procurement Read More »
End users engage us late. Finance doesn’t recognize soft cost savings. Executives view us as a cost center instead of as a profit enabling entity. Business units view us as an impediment. LinkedIn is flooded with memes, grandstanding, and complaints about these issues. For the first 10 years of my career, I felt the same
Procurement Being Undervalued: It’s Not Them. It’s Us. Read More »
We’re operating by the old school rules a bit in procurement. Of all of our goals and objectives, the one that never changes and is the ultimate measure of our success is Cost Savings. But cost savings is mostly an internal metric. The rest of the company doesn’t see the same value. Here’s what happens
More Cost Savings Will Not Secure Procurement A Seat At The Table. It Never Will. Read More »
1. Introduction: The AI Tipping Point in Procurement Negotiation Let this sink in: By 2027, Fortune 500 CPOs will be able to close high-value deals without speaking to a single supplier rep. AI-powered negotiation is no longer a theoretical advancement of the future — it is a reality, here and now. In our previous analysis,
AI and the Future of Procurement Negotiations: A 2025 Vision and Beyond Read More »
Having spent more than three decades in the procurement profession, working with countless Fortune 500 firms, I’ve witnessed a significant evolution in procurement negotiation strategies. This retrospective highlights key shifts over the past 25 years, focusing on the transition from purely transactional approaches to highly sophisticated, AI-driven, and autonomous procurement methods. Early Years: Transactional and
A Quarter Century of Procurement Negotiation Strategies: A Retrospective Read More »
Over the last two decades, we’ve witnessed a number of players in the Source-to-Pay (S2P) sector, among them Zycus, Coupa, Ivalua, SAP Ariba, Donkey, Zip, Tonkean, and others. Zycus has brought forward their new Merlin Agentic AI Suite, which they envision as a leading-edge solution that streamlines, simplifies and transforms the procurement request intake to
Who You Negotiate With Matters. A Lot.
 Who You Negotiate With Matters. A Lot. Read More »
It’s interesting that there is this assumption that suppliers are entitled to determine who it is that you negotiate with on their side. Sure, there is the exception that procurement may insist on a certain level of employee that is sufficiently authorized. So instead of the Regional Director of Sales, perhaps the Western Region Sales
 Who You Negotiate With Matters. A Lot. Read More »
As a veteran observer of the procurement technology landscape for three decades, I’ve witnessed numerous waves of innovation sweep through the industry. The advent of AI is perhaps the biggest yet, and changes everything for what is possible in the procurement space. The recent Forrester Waveâ„¢ report on Supplier Value Management (SVM) Platforms for Q3
The Seismic Shift in Supplier Value Management: A New Era Dawns Read More »
Your enemy in negotiations is not who you think it is. They don’t sit on the other side of the table. Your enemy is within. Almost all external negotiations fail because of internal negotiation failure. Negotiations do not start when you engage suppliers in potential purchase talks. They start when your end user engages you
Your Enemy in Negotiation Deal Design Read More »
