r/procurement

Hi guys,

Trying to deeply understand how real-world procurement works for industrial components

From the outside, it feels like a lot of time is spent just figuring out:

• Who has the part
• At what price
• And how fast it can be delivered

Before jumping to any solution, I wanted to validate whether this is actually a meaningful problem.

A few things I’d love to understand:

Current workflow

• When you need a component urgently, what’s your exact step-by-step process?
• How do you discover and shortlist vendors?
• How do you check availability, pricing, and lead time?

Time & friction

• How long does it usually take to finalize a supplier?
• What part of the process is the most frustrating or repetitive?

Vendor dynamics

• Do you usually stick to known vendors, or explore new ones?
• When do you decide to reach out to a new supplier?

Importance of the problem

• Have delays in sourcing ever impacted production, deadlines, or projects?
• How critical is speed vs price in these situations?

Edge cases / alternatives

• Have you built any workarounds (preferred vendor lists, internal systems, etc.)?
• Are there tools/platforms that already solve this well?

Exploring directions (if this problem is real)

• Would faster visibility into availability + lead time be more valuable than better pricing?
• Would you trust aggregated vendor data, or prefer direct communication?
• Where do you think such a system would break in practice?

Would really appreciate any real examples or experiences (even rough ones).

We got a new CFO recently

Procurement has now been moved under the CFO as much as I tried to avoid it.

I haven't got a solid gauge on him yet, but I feel like we're going to butt heads.

I got an email today from him stating we should be on 60 day terms with all suppliers.

Is anyone legitimately getting 60 terms as an SME without paying increased costs from the Vendor?

I've been pricing in new contracts that are 30% below our current pricing, but know some of these suppliers don't have the margin to carry more than 30 days risk.

60 days EOM, feels like a CFO who has an investment banking background trying to throw weight around.

Tell me I'm wrong.

I'm building the procurement department from scratch here.

For anyone spending a ton on API use with OpenAI or Anthropic, what discounts are you actually getting? I’ve heard things like at $1M you might only get around 5% off.

I just accepted an offer to become a "Tactical Buyer". This will be my first dedicated procurement role, though I have had procurement experience in previous roles. As such, I believe I have a lot to learn. My question is: What advice do you have for entering my first week of work to help make my first 1-3 months the best they can be?

For a bit of context, the company is located in the southeastern part of the US serving four different states with just under 2,000 employees primarily in the MEP industry. The procurement teams handles all purchasing except for marketing and it's size is around 10 people.

One of the biggest hurdles I see is they use an ERP and I've never had the opportunity to use that kind of software before. I'm confident in my ability to learn it.

My goal is to show up ready to learn and send the message that I mean to be an asset to the team, grow in my skills, and ultimately progress in the company.

Had an internal conversation this week that got me thinking.

There’s been a push lately for suppliers to bring more ideas to the table. Not just deliver what we ask for, but suggest improvements. Cheaper materials, better processes, even small design tweaks.

But I feel that when I try to do it, it might actually create a friction. Since most of our suppliers are smaller players, and you can feel the hesitation. They don’t want to propose something that might backfire. And to be fair, we’re also quite cautious. One issue with a component and it can affect production pretty quickly.

So it ends up in this weird middle ground where everyone agrees innovation is important, but no one really moves first.

I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a more structured way to approach this. Not just ask our suppliers for ideas, but actually set it up properly so it doesn’t create unnecessary risk.

I'm thinking of taking a structured approach regarding this matter. Has anyone come across a course or something practical that goes into this? Maybe around supplier collaboration or SRM in general.

Curious what others have tried, especially in setups where suppliers are more risk-averse.

Inherited a vendor portfolio at a logistics client last year. Day two of the audit, I found a managed print contract that had been auto-renewing since 2021. The office moved buildings in 2022. The printers were sitting in a locked storage room on the second floor of a building nobody used.

$14K/year. Four years. $56K total for machines collecting dust.

The vendor knew. They'd been sending invoices to a shared AP inbox that nobody checked after the office manager left.

That's the one that made me stop trusting spreadsheet tracking.

What's the worst one you've found?

Let's say a company is in the process of moving from a manual hardware procurement workflow to a more automated asset procurement model.

What could possibly go wrong? And for the companies that have been successful in doing that, can you share some wisdom as in the key best practices we must keep in mind to avoid common mistakes?

I've worked with about 30 mid-market companies over the past decade. Every single one started with a spreadsheet. Most still use one.

The pattern is always the same: someone builds a tracker in Excel, it works for 6 months, then the person who built it leaves or gets busy. The spreadsheet goes stale. A contract auto-renews. Finance asks what happened.

What I've seen in the wild:

- Shared Excel file on SharePoint that 4 people edit and nobody trusts
- Outlook calendar reminders set by one person who left 2 years ago
- A Notion database that started clean and now has 40 blank rows
- "Dave knows" (Dave is on holiday)
- A sticky note on a monitor. Not joking.

What does your team use? At what contract volume did it start breaking?

Hey I am sourcing manager for a construction company and I'm trying to apply rebates. How do I apply rebates? Dealing with a subcontractor and a owner. Has anyone ever dealt with this?Or have any experience with this?