What procurement can learn from being user-centred
How do you make procurement less of a blocker?
This is a question we are often asked so we wanted to share some views on how to become less of a constraint (clue: put your users first).
Digital services are based on the needs of users. Therefore most digital services are on a constant iterative cycle of user research, user design, user build, user test and release to the user. The frequency of these is high - think about how many updates your smart phone asks of you.
The organisations best at doing this are successful because they base all of this work on two principles:
user-centred design, and
multi-disciplinary teamwork.
As procurement people it is our job to meet the needs of the teams doing the digital transformation.
Find out who your users are - it will make procurement better
We want to share our experiences of how we understand our users - the people that use our procurement service. At Procurement School we are taught to call them:
Clients
Internal customers
Consumers
Business teams
Confused already?
Let’s just call them users.
Picture of Apple iPhone running a software update (other smart phones are available)
Types of peopleUnderstanding the people you work with enables you to tailor the service you are providing to them. This makes procurement better. Many procurement teams have a standard service level agreement (SLA) for engaging with users and frankly this just doesn’t work for complex / non-commoditised procurement projects, like digital.
Examples of this include:
procurement cannot engage with the users until they (the users) have their specification sorted
We know procurement can add value here advising on how to engage with and learn from the market - what outcome needs producing. Promote getting involved in this stage as early as possible
procurement won't engage until the business case is signed-off
This is where procurement can add value in terms of category knowledge and industry trends (as well as pricing - you have a budget right?)
the procurement activity isn’t in the pipeline so the procurement function won't assign a procurement person to the project
Frankly this is ridiculous
Picture of Apple iPhone running a software update (other smart phones are available)
What makes the various users tick
When we start a new digital procurement project our number one priority is to understand our users. Whenever we meet a new user from the project we ask them to prioritise (list in order of importance to them individually, as humans not corporate assets) 8 crucial subsets of procurement. This is the first stage in us working out who our users are. We can then start to build up a series of user personas and adapt our service to each team or individual.
This information provides us with insight to how our relationship will work and what we might have to do:
influence their thinking
educate them about procurement
help stimulate the market
explain procurement processes
buy in external legal support
think about contract management
The list does go on.
We now know the various types of personalities, skill sets, experiences and appetites we will be working with. We have formed user groups, which we refer to as procurement personas.
Personas
On one digital procurement project we defined the users personas on a scale of 1 – 10 (with 1 being the lowest level of experience). The subjects were:
subject to be delivered, including market
procurement
contracts
risk appetite
savings targets
All 25 people on the project had a mix of scores. Some scored high for subject knowledge and low for procurement knowledge. Others had strong contract knowledge, medium procurement knowledge, but had a very enthusiastic style towards risk.
We had a strong mix. This was a true multi-disciplinary team. This team delivered its things quicker as we tailored the procurement activities to the personas involved.
Users don't need to know everything
It is easy for procurement people to think “all of the people I work with need to know everything about procurement. I’ll tell them about the rules, explain how a contract works, describe contract management techniques”.
With this approach you'll see people nodding off and disengaging. This is failing to deliver a basic, let alone efficient user service. They don't need to know everything. Think Minimum Viable Procurement.
By understanding your users you will keep the procurement conversations relevant to both the users and the topic in hand. Your users will also learn at their pace - they will thank you for this (this will make you happier).
Users – why bother understanding them
It is simple, it enhances collaboration.
I’ve had first hand experience of people walking into a meeting with procurement people thinking:
‘what are we going to have to negotiate on with our internal procurement team and what hacks shall we confess too’.
We are on the same page……!
The more we get to know the users the more we get to understand how they work. But more importantly, why they do certain things (like hack the process or circumnavigate the rules).
This in turn allows us to flex the procurement activities to our users. We become efficient.
All of this delivers better things much quicker.
The team becomes effective.
Procurement becomes less hated.
Good times.
CURSHAW Insight: Design your procurement processes for the users (this includes bidders) and reframe procurement so normal people understand it.
