The procurement saints

About 20 years ago, I used to work for a very small start-up.

Procurement buddies, those workday saints, have always been what separates a good day from a terrible one

And I mean small levels of small. There were four of us, to be precise. All of us university buddies, two of us (the founders) identical twins.

You can’t make it up. And yes, before you ask, it was way before the Winklevoss twins. It was before fintech was a word. For me at least. And before I had any order of magnitude benchmark in my head that would help me realise how big a deal it was that we had a large investment bank as our client.

Anyway.

This isn’t a story about opportunities missed. It is a story about procurement.

Because one of my most abiding memories of that time was the frustration and anger experienced during the hours wasted on said client’s vendor management portal.

We were a vendor. And a very small one at that. A new system – let’s call it Clunky-Clogs (not its real name) for the sake of this story – arrived to great fanfare replacing… not humans.

The team we had been dealing with didn’t go anywhere. The system was meant to replace human interaction so the humans could go on to do other things. Important things. Internal things.

Only it didn’t. It just added endless hours of pointless circular user journey hell to my life and probably more touch points with the team that used to handle all our invoices before and now handled my “What do I do next?” queries on a system that we all agreed was designed by the devil himself.

Imagine my horror when a client I am working with now… 20 years on… a very different client… sent me a note asking me to be onboarded to yet another system as a vendor, and when I click on the link, I find myself back into the warm embrace of the Clunky-Clogs platform. Looking uncannily similar to how it did back then.

Can we please agree that your procurement has a problem if you are still using the same system we all hated 20 years ago? Can we at least agree your digital transformation is yet to touch procurement if you are still using the same system that looks the same way and does the same thing?

Because if we can agree that, then here’s your first action point of the day: if your systems for onboarding vendors are 20 years old, maybe it’s time to rethink them.

Because if your systems date back 20 years, so do your processes. And the world has changed substantially since then.

You know how I know?

Because I have worked on both sides of this fence. I was a vendor many times over and I was a banking decision-maker for many years, and I can tell you, signed and sealed from both sides of this horror movie: the processes have not changed. But the world has.

Which means that your experience as a vendor… and your likelihood of getting what you are trying to do over the line as a bank… are equally left to that fickle goddess… luck of the draw. The draw of which team member will pick up the request for help or the action item on any given day.

Behold what a bad day looks like: I am asked to do something by a bank.

I accept.

Then nine months pass.

Not nine months of silence. No, no. That would be better than what actually happens.

Nine months of back and forth with the relevant teams on their side. They have paperwork they need me to fill. About seven times over because they get it wrong. They are inefficient. They are unhelpful. They are unapologetic.

Here is another one.

I am asked to do a piece of work by an FI. I know them well, so I do the work at risk because there is a deadline they need to meet.

Three months pass. I am onboarded onto what feels like six different vendor management systems, but maybe they are the same one and my credentials expired? I can’t tell. It’s the same questions… and the platforms look and feel the same. And I am pretty sure I put all the details onto a spreadsheet as well.

All the information was in my SOW of course. And my invoice.

Not to mention that this isn’t the first piece of work I am doing for them, but somehow the process last time was different in all its particulars… other than the fact that I had to fill out endless forms then too.

But here we are again. It was not one and done. The nightmare repeats endlessly while I can’t help but ask myself how many systems can there be, seriously?

You’ve been there. I know.

And you have been to the opposite place too…

Here is what a good day looks like when dealing with big FI procurement. It’s just like the above but with a buddy who nudges the process along internally, pushes their colleagues not to treat you like you owe them money because, by now, it is actually the other way round… a buddy that reminds you that you are not forgotten or hated… that you are not a nuisance.

And one more thing… you know what else they do? They apologise.

It’s not their fault, but they apologise and they try to help and they are the reason why you will do business with this FI again. And get onboarded again like you never met before.

And, you know what… even if you, as a decision-maker inside said FI, didn’t have the money to change the blasted Clunky-Clogs system… and you didn’t have the energy to fix your process… you know what you can do?

You can create some performance incentives for your own team.

You can make their behaviour towards your vendors (or your applicants for jobs, come to think of it) matter.

Are your team members facing into this group of people helpful? Are they polite? Are they human? Are they keeping an eye on what you are trying to achieve and helping to navigate a process that is – we can all agree – not fit for purpose? And don’t speak to me about risk management. We all know it is a valid consideration and that this process creates more risk than it manages, so let’s skip that conversation altogether.

I know for a fact that the people who helped me along and will continue to, in these hellscapes, don’t get rewarded for it.

They are not penalised for it either. But they are not rewarded.

They help because they are just nice humans. And those who don’t? Those who make mistakes and unapologetically ask you to start afresh? Those who send you terse emails chastising you for not having guessed they needed another form they never asked for?

They are never penalised. They are never told off. Even though their job is to get you onboarded to do the work the organisation needs and they are patently terrible at it. Even though you are their stakeholder and they treat you abysmally, it doesn’t matter because you don’t matter as far as they are concerned.

They face into the organisation for praise and success metrics and you, incredibly, are a nuisance.

So, if you, as a decision-maker, want to fix your procurement, then fix that behaviour. It comes cheap in that you don’t need to change anything other than your attitude and that of your team.

So it takes effort and will and decency. But no capital expenditure.

So I guess you may opt for system transformation instead. That may seem simpler by comparison.

And I for one will not complain if I never see Clunky-Clogs again.

But I will not hold my breath, and I know you won’t either.

So, in the meantime, if we are stuck with Clunky-Clogs and with the teams that add to the problem… maybe you can at least create a little diagram of your process? With all its foibles and multitude of systems and duplicate entries?

So that if you ever decide to fix this chaos, you have somewhere to start.

So that I can tell how far from the end I am at any one time. I can draw a little ‘we are here’ arrow to keep track. Or not. Since we will be going back on ourselves a lot, I expect.

So that, if you were inclined to look, you could see how many loop-backs your team went through, how much rework. How many dead ends. Unnecessary dead ends.

A map would help.

So that I know how much more of this I need to endure… and so you can know where you went wrong, should you choose to know and maybe do better next time…

Till then, I shall endure.

Have no fear.

I shall endure and persevere and navigate against the odds by the grace of the people who choose to help.

The procurement buddies, those workday saints.

They have always been what separates a good day from a terrible one. And always will be.

#LedaWrites

Leda Glyptis is FinTech Futures’ resident thought provocateur – she leads, writes on, lives and breathes transformation and digital disruption.

She is a recovering banker, lapsed academic and long-term resident of the banking ecosystem. 

Leda is also a published author – her first book, Bankers Like Us: Dispatches from an Industry in Transition, is available to order here.

All opinions are her own. You can’t have them – but you are welcome to debate and comment!

Follow Leda on X @LedaGlyptis and LinkedIn.