Heading 1

What initiatives and projects are you working on or accountable for?

• Divestiture
• Save $100 million
• Digital transformation of the company
• Demand management
• Cost takeout
• Project reporting to the CFO
• Million-dollar contracts
• Alternative fuels
• Improving operations
• Working with outside engineering firms

“We work 6,000 different projects a year within our group, and it can be complicated, just putting a non-disclosure agreement together.

“We have an integration management office that’s looking at how we take three companies into one.”

“We’re accountable for the execution of key contracts in the IT space, the HR space, and finance space, along with marketing and advertising.”

“Strategic level projects at the company level that include things like our peer-to-peer recognition program.”

“We’re going through divestiture. So the parent company split roughly 18 months ago, and we have eight months to spin off into two publicly traded companies.”

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Will these initiatives change in the next 6 to 12 months?

• The intensity will increase
• No significant changes
• Initiatives remain the same, but focus changes

“One of the challenges of our employee recognition program is determining who gets what and why. And in a hybrid work environment, how do you ensure you’re not just throwing something over the fence with no daily use or impact?”

“We’ll look at improving operations, making the supply chain more robust and resilient, buying different kinds of newer equipment, and finding better, more efficient raw material.”

“We’re trying to match the pace of other companies.”

“Some initiatives will continue in different phases. Some will change.”

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What initiatives do you envision in the next three to five years?

• Evolving the organization technologically
• Implementing AI
• increasing profitability
• Growing topline sales
• Reducing costs
• Continued cost savings for raw materials
• Employee retention and engagement.”

“Further outsourcing, digitizing more work, moving applications to cloud environments from on-premises.”

“Digital activity: How are we leveraging either data within our ERP or how are we leveraging bolt-on software programs to drive efficiencies?”

“Running operations more efficiently, which translates into looking into nearshoring or onshoring or reshoring.”

“We’ll focus a lot on sustainability and ESG initiatives, environmental and social initiatives.”

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What are your key performance objectives?

• Continuity of supply, cost
• Savings
• Successful RFPs
• Onboarding suppliers
• Negotiating reasonable prices
• Cost savings

“Hard dollar savings, delivering a $250 million of PL impact, net promoter score of 70 or above, average speed of less than 60 days to do work. Supplier diversity spend of $600 million this year. No audit failures and top-tier suppliers going through performance management programs.”

“Achieve a successful divestiture to avoid a $1 billion tax bill and then deliver $100 million in savings to the CFO.”

“Cost savings is certainly number one.”

“We have to be able to deliver, not only negotiate the best price.”

“At the end of the day, we’re trying to be compliant and save the company money.”

“It’s getting the right kind of services and materials to internal and external customers. My internal customers are the engineers and the manufacturing facility. And external customers are the common customers for the entire company.”

What are your aspirations for personal success and growth? (overall)

• Satisfying the internal needs of the company to support growth
• Education—becoming better at procurement, more valuable to my teams
• Career advancement

“I want keep learning. I take several professional development courses, and I want to develop a peer mentor network.”

“Become a chief procurement officer, either in my current organization or a new one.”

“Overall is to keep improving from today and be a better person at the personnel level and keep improving my knowledge set and keep learning.”

“At the procurement level, I’ve reached as high as I can go. So maybe go back into the business and run a P&L again.”

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What are your aspirations for personal success? (specific to recognition)

“I think the short answer is recognition. It’s not just nothing.”

“One of our sub-metrics is employee engagement. We just went up from 78 last year to 89, and that was in a four-month cycle. So we’re trending in the right way, and I value that metric.

“We didn’t have anything formal until a few months ago, and in general, it’s been very well-received. We just need to make sure we execute on some of these things, even if we start small, it builds credibility within the organization that we mean what we say.”

“Personally, it’s all about satisfying the internal needs of the company to support growth”

“I want it to be a compelling engagement for our associates. I want it to be core to our culture.”

“I want to see our recognition evolve? Long gone are the days when you would give out a hat or an ill-fitting t-shirt, and people would be happy.”

“My wish would be that people recognize the effort and the fact that this is not normal, not every company does this.”

“Making sure the right people get recognized and that I get recognized in doing what I need to do.”

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What are your aspirations for the organization? (overall)

“Less than 5% attrition, less than 1% regrettable attrition. I want see employee engagement go from 89% to high nineties in the next year and a half.”

“To make more money, to grow, to innovate and do all that stuff. The bottom line is making more money.”

“To develop a healthy culture.”

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What are your aspirations for the organization? (specific to recognition)

“I want to see us promote leaders who can drive higher employee engagement and I want to help train or mentor or exit those leaders who can’t. I think that’s a key barometer of success.”

“Taking employee recognition seriously. Good talented people are hard to find and harder to retain. Great people are indispensable.”

“Partner every single employee on our team with a mentor and outline where they are, where they want and need to be professionally, and how we can fill those gaps and also reward the right behavior through recognition.”

What challenges do you face in your role? (overall)

• Talent and retention
• Limited budget
• Alignment on initiatives
• Cost savings with business clients
• Supply continuities
• Labor resources from suppliers
• Meeting synergy targets

“The volatile nature of the environment we live in. Everything from supply chain to inflation and prices”

“Difficulty finding talent, meeting supplier diversity goals and targets, and taking vacation. Those are the three.”

“I think it’s just the same as everyone else, budget and staffing.”

“We’re at a critical point where we need to make sure that we are keeping the top talent over the next year, because we’re in a pretty critical phase right now.”

“Needing to quickly become expert in the category where the company wants to buy.”

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In the next 6 to 12 months, will those challenges change?

“Yes, I think they’ll get harder.”

“Yeah, I expect we’re past the peak.”

“Continuity of supply will be less of an issue, along with the labor component that improves over time as we’ve dug ourselves out of some of the Covid issues.”

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What types of risks do you face in your role?

• Retention
• Inflation
• Supply of service and raw materials
• Managing multi-sourcing/continuity-of-supply issues
• Data privacy compliance
• Tech risks (malware, spyware)
• Geo-political risks
• STEEP (social, technology, economic, environmental, political)

“Cybersecurity risk is by far the main one. The second one is a general liability risk from something bad happening and damaging our brand.”

“The biggest risk is if we run out of material in our sites. We manufacture things, so if our plants don’t have product, then that’s a problem.”

“The use of minerals, precious metals, paper supply, things of that nature, creates risk from a compliance perspective and a brand perspective.”

“To save money, we have to change suppliers and processes. And that creates a lot of risk as we renegotiate a few hundred different contracts.”

“Sometimes procurement is an afterthought—so either we rubber-stamp something done before, or we disrupt the process and slow down the decision.”

INSIGHT: If Procurement is included late in the buying process, it can cause re-work. Coach your prospects to involve Procurement from the beginning. They can be a strong ally.

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What risks related to recognition do you face in your role?

“Retention: The more engaged your employees, the more productive they are and the fewer mistakes they make.”

“I have very good people who I don’t want to lose. We can handle all the other challenges as long as we have good people.”

“Engaging people across the organization, and ensuring they feel recognized and appreciated for the work they do.”

“People want to receive feedback, and we can stand up a program like we’ve done for peer-to-peer recognition, but you almost need to force them to get familiar with the tool or they won’t use it.”

“Measuring how people use our recognition tool. Some people are better at taking advantage of the tool than others.”

“The risks are spending time, effort, money, and not getting the desired results.”

“Not knowing what you’re doing—like not knowing what Gen Z cares about, and not having a targeted concerted effort.”

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What problems do you face that obstruct your operational and functional goals or objectives?

• Pay not in sync with market
• Too many cooks in the kitchen
• Administrative burdens
• Complex operating model
• Replacing people who’ve left
• Qualifying/onboarding new suppliers
• Finite resources and time

“Figuring out how to make decisions faster.”

“Building the skill set, especially with newer employees that are, in many cases, working remotely.”

“Aligning resources both inside and outside our organization.”

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What problems do you face that obstruct your personal and performance goals?

“Lack of time and resources.”

“Time constraints would be the big one.”

“Finding leaders who are invested in growing individuals, everyone’s too busy.”

“Balancing time to make sure the organization and the culture is moving in the right direction to support the work that need to be done.”

“You can’t fix everything, but you want to be considered on top of your game to drive the things that are important from a dashboard standpoint and from a culture standpoint at the same time.”

What obstacles to your business goals does your organization face?

“Systems are too complicated and lead to bad customer experiences.”

“Reimbursement rates are low, so it’s hard to find doctors and providers who want to participate in the network. Our overhead is too expensive which makes our price expensive, and that’s where we lose market share.”

“The biggest potential problem could be softening demand. It’s more of a challenge than a problem, but it’s a potential problem in the near future.”

“The enterprise goals and objectives are to support growth. Continuity supply has impeded that in some cases.”

“Cost can be something that makes it impossible to drive the growth of a project if you’re not getting the right gross margin.”

“Systems and/or the lack of digitization or data at your fingertips often gets in the way.”

“You need to understand all the data that’s important to make decisions and bring it to the forefront.”

“Inflation and geopolitical unrest.”

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How do you tie your purchase process to larger company goals or initiatives?

“Provide true value, speed, quality, and be easy to do business with. We try to measure work in terms of clicks, and we want stakeholders to have less than three clicks to engage with us.”

“The process is typically a function of larger company goals. And of course, that’s all after you stay compliant.”

“It’s a combination of control and value. We ensure we have the right people making the right decisions at the right levels so we can execute. And then, at the same time, we have metrics that are directly tied to cost-savings initiatives, value creation, cost avoidance, profit margin expansion, and specifically the decisions that our procurement team makes.”

“Our purchasing goals are tied to sustainability.”

“I try to tie everything we do in supply chain to the company corporate goals.”

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What strategic factors (e.g., business expansion, competencies, cultural fit) impact the purchase decision process?

“We look at what volume we’re adding on, and what geographies we’re adding to.”

“As a global organization, we struggle with a combination of requirements of inventory, of regulations. We try to strategically balance the needs of the business with risk mitigation, while also not trying to cover our problems with extra material. It’s a balancing approach.”

“The corporate roadmap dictates purchases. Total function of the overall company strategy.”

“Strategic factors include how the outside world is reacting to what we call the PEST (political, economic, sociocultural, and technological) factors. Also, how the company is doing. If the bottom line is shrinking, purchasing has to pivot quickly to do certain things very differently.”

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What financial factors (e.g., revenue growth, cost containment) impact your purchase decision process?

“The budget for the following year, the reimbursement rates we get from our biggest customers—federal and state government—and inflation.”

“We’re very focused on working capital and the impact that inventory has on it. So we might decide not to purchase as much as we could, even if the price was lower, if it’d tie up inventory.”

“The two biggest things on the revenue factor are cost, especially if we’re competitively bidding something, and then payment terms, which comes into the cash component of it.”

“It’s the total cost of ownership versus the ROI.”

“When the top line is growing, procurement has to keep up to speed with that scalability. You have to ensure you get everything needed in time and negotiate the payment terms and contracts. Otherwise, we miss targets.”

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What operational factors (e.g., workflow efficiency, productivity) impact your purchase decision process?

• Staying on task
• Obtaining consensus
• Volume of work

“Aligning my goals with the goals of the teams I serve.”

“Digital savviness of the product we’re trying to buy, plus GOs and locations of the products offered. Analytics capability would be another one.”

“There’s days on hand, there’s percentage of scrap, things like that that we have to make sure we have parameters in place that give us as much visibility as possible to the actual usage.”

“When we look at end-to-end procurement software, we’ll look at the licensing costs, we’ll look at the integration cost to have it work with our systems and our suppliers, and we’ll look at the training and onboarding costs of our employees to deploy it.”

“The switch-over cost needs to be part of it. Say you’re pitching from O.C. Tanner to a different recognition program, there are always integration and stand-up costs that you need to consider in that decision.”

“The purchase aligns with what our capabilities are.”

“Just making sure that goals align and support each other, from the business side and our operational side.”

“Every day, we think we’re finally making headway with our workload. Then, it hits us again. We get new requests constantly from different business sectors about products, software, hardware.”

What unique language or vocabulary (e.g., keywords, phrases) is commonly used in your job role or industry to describe needs, pain points, initiatives, and challenges?

• OTD (on-time delivery)
• CPU (cost per unit)
• Out-of-stock
• Allocation (need 100, but can only get 10)
• Bottleneck
• Regulations
• Inefficiencies
• Indecisiveness

“‘Per member, per month,’ that’s our cost—our claims cost—that we usually think about.”

“We talk about ‘headwinds’ and ‘tailwinds.’”

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How do you use internet searches to learn about market trends, vendors, or products (e.g., keywords about an industry problem or initiative, a specific product/technology category, or a particular vendor)?

“I think 80% of our market intelligence comes from Google around who’s best-in-class in industry, which companies rank highest and then we find peers or people who can explain things to us through a kind of peer-to-peer network arrangement like LinkedIn.”

“It could be what we’re looking for, whether it’s keywords like ‘waste management’ or ‘employee recognition.’ And then drilling deeper as far as regional, global, cost structure.”

“Within a procurement organization, companies will often have category specialists or leaders. So, for example, we’d have a leader that managed our travel, another leader that’s responsible for marketing and advertising, another one for IT. We expect them to be current with what’s changing in that area for procurement of those types of services and activities.”

“We definitely use Google, but then we have other services and sites we pay for because Google doesn’t give you everything.”

Do you sponsor or champion the purchase of a product, service, or solution? If not, who does?

• No, VP of HR (majority)
• No, CHRO
• No, HR in general

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Do you make the final decision for the purchase of a product, service, or solution? If not, who does?

“Chief People Officer”

“Our VP of HR came to me for help finding a solution. So she was the champion, and we were in charge of looking at options, and then I presented our recommendation.”

“The chief procurement officer is part of that decision-making team, but ultimately, the final decision comes down to the CHRO, the CFO from a financial standpoint, and potentially the CEO in terms of approving a large investment that has an impact on culture.”

“It’s a collaborative decision.”

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Do you use the purchased product, service, or solution on a day-to-day basis?

“There’s a director of HR rewards who runs the program day to day.”

“Not on a day-to-day basis, no”

“Not day to day, I’d say once a week.”

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Do you handle procurement and negotiation, or manage the settling of terms, conditions, and pricing?

“Yes” (all respondents)

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What key stages of the purchasing process do you play an advisory role?

“We summarize proposals, the pros and cons, and we might make a recommendation on who. After that, a cross-functional team scores all the bids from a bunch of different angles.”

“On the front end, I advise during the solution selection stage. And then once a selection is made, I lead the rest of the process.”

“So in the case of a recognition program like this, I expect my category leader to be involved in the day-to-day activity and keeping the indirect procurement manager aware of activities.”

“Every other week I’ll meet with the team leader to see where we’re at, if they’re waiting for data, what it looks like, whether the solution meets the requirement, and if the provider is responsive.”

What is the purchase decision process at your organization?

“It’s procurement 101. It’s a competitive RFP.”

“We put together a team that often includes:

Employee relations leader, someone who’s working on retention

Somebody from IT looking at the ins and outs of how the system is going to work

Your sourcing leader, that’s your category leader on the team

Maybe someone from legal.”

“Collectively, the buying team assembles all the nuts and bolts of what this software package is going to do, how it’s going to work.

“You might have somebody who’s focused on how we’ll roll this out and communicate to our organization about it.”

“All these people have different points and have to make it a success—they’ll all weigh in on the capabilities and the cost.”

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Please rank your involvement in the discovery (early) phase of the buying process from 1 to 5.

Avg: 3.5

Range: 3–4

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Please rank your involvement in the evaluation (middle) phase of the buying process, 1 to 5.

Avg: 4.5

Range: 4–5

“Sometimes I have to say, ‘This might be a really good software package for what you want it to do, but it will be a nightmare to integrate and roll out.’ And the team’s talking about it, but the HR folks are just excited about the sales pitch and they’re not thinking about whether we can really deploy it.”

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Please rank your involvement in the commitment (final) phase of the buying process, 1 to 5.

Avg: 5

Range: 5

“Heavily engaged, five.”

“Five on this because it was high visibility, otherwise it would’ve been a three.”

“I need to protect us while the client’s getting what they need from the frontend. That’s where I influence. And if there’s a gap, I push back a little harder. But ultimately, what the CHRO cares about is whether I support the team’s recommendation or not.”

How do you evaluate vendors to choose one over another?

• Use cases
• Best practices/best principles
• Program design
• Cost
• Analytics reporting

“We do a competitive RFP and then leverage a balance scorecard to evaluate.”

“The application: How do we access all of this in one consistent way?”

“The approach, like what elements do they lean on—e-cards, gift giving, awards, etc.—how they’re distributed, what’s the best practice there?”

“Basic capability to meet the requirements for the scope of work.”

“What add-ons can they offer in terms of capability? How easy is it for employees to send e-cards or peer-to-peer? What do they offer within their catalog for people to use if they have point systems or they’re purchasing from a work anniversary catalog?”

“We look at their integration capability with our existing IT systems.”

“What will it cost us, both upfront and the ongoing licenses? What type of escalators do they have for costs in the out years of the contract? And then what type of payment terms are they willing to give us?”

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How important is post-purchase support in your decision? And how do you evaluate a provider’s ability to provide ongoing support?

“It’s not the main consideration, but it would be part of our contract and we would have SLAs around platform uptime and reporting. We want to see who’s accessing the tools, how often, and we want to schedule quarterly business reviews with the supplier and have a named account lead or point of contact.”

“In some cases, yes. That’s part of the contract negotiations we’d put into the Ts and Cs.”

“It’s important. We ask for referrals and one of the questions we ask is, “Do they disappear after you buy it? And we get some good feedback on that.”

“With existing suppliers, you know what support you’re getting. If it’s a new supplier, you’re very dependent on assessments early on where you go and talk to current customers.”

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Is it important or helpful to understand the provider’s long-term plans for the offering? How would you want the provider to share that information with you?

“It’s a secondary consideration, but definitely a consideration. We want to see improvements in the platform and the award design and we’ll study it with our culture-of-continuous-improvement lens. We can discuss it during quarterly business reviews.”

 “When you buy IT solutions, you have these ongoing dialogues in face-to-face meetings so you can ask questions. That usually works well.”

“Absolutely. It’s important to know how many customers they support, if they’re doing it on-prem or in the cloud, how much R&D they’re investing in improvements.”

“We want someone who’s been around for a little while and will continue to be.”

“The IT person on the team is supposed to bring some of that because companies have been burned when they spend all this money, and the supplier goes defunct.”

“That’d be part of the relationship management. I’d expect them to give us insights, during our scheduled business reviews about their plans.”

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Do you consider the provider’s supply chain and distribution partners when making a purchase decision? If so, how?

“Yes. We want to know how things are sourced. What’s the SLA at operation? We might not get this in a contract, but we want to understand it. And how long they’ve been in business with supply chain partners and who manages it?”

“We want to know who they’re working with and how those partners are going to interact with us. We want to also understand where that resourcing is coming from.”

“We expect third-party suppliers to follow our same responsible sourcing guidelines as we would in the indirect and the direct space.”

“It depends. If it’s critical to the service, yes. If it’s ancillary to what they’re doing, no.”

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How do you justify your recommended vendor to move the purchase through the approval process?

“The outcome of the competitive RFP and the balance scorecard review.”

“We come up with dimensions that are important to us and weight them. It could be program design, reporting, software application, supply chain, ongoing support, etc. But we’d go through the orals and read all the RFPs and rank how every supplier responded and come up with a weighted average from the team, the score.”

“Once the CHRO has the proposal, I support the proposal, IT supports the proposal, legal supports it, then it’s really up to that individual to obtain funding, and depending on the cost, the CFO and CEO ultimately approve the funding.”

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Can you think of instances in which gaining approval for a purchase was more difficult than you expected? Why was it difficult? Is there something the vendor could have done to make it easier for you?

“Yeah, it came down to the return on the investment. Employee recognition should equal a return, whether it be retention or employee engagement. And the supplier or the business team didn’t think it through or measure it, so it looks like just an expense line to a CFO or COO.”

“I have had multiple situations where that was the case. If you propose something that doesn’t tie to growth, it always becomes more difficult because there’s not an endless amount of cash in any company.”

“When you do a peer-to-peer recognition program or a digital program that’s going drive efficiencies, I think part of your CFO’s role is to always challenge or question the timing and the value.”

“When they’re corporate-wide, proposals have to fit within the budget and they have to drive the right type of KPIs within the organization because it’s going to take all kinds of IT and HR resources.”

“Curveballs like a leadership change or a financial hiccup across the business. But those are rare. The vendor is almost never involved unless we need to go back and reopen negotiations to reduce cost or adjust timing.”

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How do you tie your purchase process to larger company goals or initiatives?

“Being keen on the need for diversity inclusion, and baking that into questions within the RFP. Diversity, equity, inclusion, talking about our goals there. We have this 50-page pamphlet that we produce every year, so we include that for reference and ask them to speak to the culture, the DEI piece, and their response.”

“It’s easy if it fits on our strategic roadmap.”

“In this indirect space, you still need to articulate what value you get from it, and you need to be able to measure that value going forward.”

“You answer questions like, ‘What are your goals for usage?’ ‘What are your goals for retention?’ ‘What is the feedback on the program?’”

Do you strongly prefer (or dislike) particular products or providers?

“No, nothing comes to mind. Our current provider isn’t performing very well, but that’s the only one I can speak to.”

“I’m only familiar with a couple that we did deep dives with. My preference was for what I saw, not necessarily for who got eliminated.”

“No, I’m open to anything.”

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Do you have strong feelings about how providers in this category have responded to your needs?

“I think there’s a general lack of innovation and a lot of rinse and repeat. We see it in service awards and the different types of items you can give out.”

“Yes. It’s a service. And I’m not happy with their performance. Our program is not as robust as it should be. And I don’t believe that if we increased our budget, they would perform any better. I don’t think they have the right services.”

“Based on just what I saw from Achievers and O.C. Tanner, I was happy with what they offered and how they articulated what it would do for us.”

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Do you have any trust issues or frustrations with the buying process?

“Yes. It’s a very fragmented space and there are a lot of small startups that over-promise what they can do. Some due diligence needed there, for sure.”

“Not from the supplier side. I think the biggest frustration is the circles you go through for approval inside the company.”

“No.”

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What category-specific sources do you rely on?

“I personally rely on my category leader to be familiar with what we’re getting.”

“HR and Technology. Those are the two.”

In the discovery (early) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

• Concise collateral
• Infographics
• Whitepapers

“A one- or two-pager about here’s how the program works. ‘We’ve deployed this X times and we’ve seen XYZ benefits, and these logos are using the tool and here are some quotes from them.’ The infographic covers how it’s deployed and how it’s relayed to internal employees in a visual way, but short and sweet.”

“Just simple high-level content: How applications work, what kind of technology, how are they deployed, and the benefits coming from the program. What’s the ROI, what are some of the good things said about them, logos.”

“The first thing is understanding capability and managing capability and requirements for the business. That’s before you get into any other level, that’s most important.”

“We often ask the question, ‘What gap are we trying to close?’ It might be cost, it might be a supplier that’s capable of doing A, B and C, versus doing separate suppliers for each. Whatever content answers the ‘gap’ question is helpful.”

“That early discussion is to narrow in on the need and the gap so that we can bring the right products in.”

“White papers, like a Gartner Magic Quadrant Industry Professional Organizations.”

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in the evaluation (middle) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

• RFP answers
• Case studies
• Recommendations

“We’re typically looking at it through an RFP. Tell us how you’d deploy a program, what’s best in class, what technology you’d use.”

“We need use cases from our industry to get leaders on board. How to use it, when to use it and the impacts are the two most important things.”

“Cost use cases in our industry with success metrics that explain how things are deployed internally from a change management perspective. And then references.”

“It could be word of mouth, it could be other companies we reach out to, asking, ‘Hey, who are you guys using for this?”

“That’s when you get into more granularity of what tools are used to meet that capability, how it could be implemented, how it would be received by new users. You start to look at the cost at a high level as far as understanding competitiveness.”

“When you get into cost, you really have to start connecting with the supplier or the service provider to understand it because everything is so customizable.”

“In the second phase, you’re documenting and starting to fill out the actual scope of work in much greater detail.”

“We ask direct questions to viable vendor partners, so it becomes a two-way dialogue.”

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In the commitment (final) phase of the purchase decision process, what type of content—or contact—informs or influences your thinking most?

“Not really looking at content. We’re in RFP mode, and that process gives us a lot of information.”

“Usually at that point, we’re trying to refine responses from three or four different suppliers into what we think is the best set of ideas, even if the incumbent or the front runner doesn’t have every one of them in their solution.”

“By then, we’re looking at contractual terms, limitation liability identification, data protection, language. We’re looking at cost, we’re looking at SLAs, we’re looking at how the integration would occur technically from API or single sign-on perspective. Plus, the details of change management, project plans, and the team working on our account, like who they are and their credentials.”

“The late stage is when you get into the details as far as, okay, if we decide this, what kind of contract are we on, what are the terms, what is the cost? How would we implement service expectations? The late phase is aligning and getting that contract in place and then making the final decision.”

“I’m looking for a formal proposal from a supplier that’s based on the facts I’ve shared. So we’re a hundred percent transparent. We share that with a prospective supplier, and then we grade their final presentation with a scorecard that determines our decision.”

In the final phase it’s not content driven. It’s actual feedback from the suppliers, it can either be a request for information where they create a proposal or it can be a formal bid. Then you go to a final negotiation or a final tuning of the offering.”

Where do you start your search for information when considering a purchase (e.g., search engine, vendor website, industry website, industry peers)?

“Employee recognition is a pretty big space right now. We Google and then we ping Gartner and Forrester, and we also have another third party we use for information. But Google is our good friend in this exercise.”

“It depends on the purchase. We belong to many professional groups. Or we might rely on previous experience or internet searches. Also, folks on the leadership team that have previous experience.”

“Often the category leader within our organization already knows who the key players are, they’ve done their research, they know that in the safety and industrial MRO space, it’s Grainger, Fastenal, MSC. They know who the six or seven players are. However, they might complement that with an internet search or information they found at a trade show, or received directly from suppliers.”

“If it’s strategic, we’re likely developing relationships well in advance with executives and sales groups in that area. If it’s tactical, then it’s typically a commoditized purchase.”

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How do you compare similar products?

“We look at their strategy, the platform, use cases in our industry, and then we rank them across those dimensions to see who’s has the capabilities we’re looking for. We do that through an RFI in a space like this that we don’t know very well.”

“Many times you really can’t compare until you get a demo or dig into details beyond a presentation.”

“We always start with the ability to meet the scope of work.”

“Often the deciding factor will be a history of quality of work.”

“I think that’s where the score card comes in. We want to make sure we’re comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges.”

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How do you prefer to receive or interact with vendors’ marketing and promotions (e.g., email, direct mail, high-impact mailers, phone call)?

• Email (most common)
• Direct mail

“Usually email, I think that’s the best way. Phone calls are tough. Direct mail is tough, doesn’t get to the right place, no one’s working in the office, so nobody’s got their right mailing address.”

“Very limited. It’s more of a distraction, quite candidly.”

“It depends on the nature of the relationship. If we already have a big annual contract, I want them to call me. But I’d rather get an email than a cold call.”

“An email would be fine.”

“We have a Teams folder for external folks and we’ll post a weekly update like, ‘Hey, we need these metrics, how many people are using it, what’s the evolution, etc.’ That’s worked because it’s not clogging up emails.”

“The world is becoming more and more self-serve, so we like to receive bid packages as a document we can review, we prefer cost info.”

“Salespeople want to build a relationship. So in my world, it’s still a fair amount of self-serve, but there’s always a need for a touch point.”

“Once the process is up and running, you want to interact as much as possible via email or transactional stuff, but I also believe when you’re doing big things, you should have check-ins, whether that’s monthly or quarterly with those big clients, just to make sure nothing’s going awry.”

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What triggers a response to a marketing message (e.g., relevant to my job role, an initiative I’m working on, or a problem I’m facing)?

• Relevance (addresses a need)
• True innovation

“If it speaks to my pain point, something that I’m researching—that catches my attention.”

“In terms of media, a quick video or a catchy two-page document on how it works with use cases and contact info can be effective.”

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Do you prefer to meet with a vendor’s salesperson or sales team by phone, video conference, or in person?

“Video first, then in person if it’s a priority.” (majority)

“First by video call. If it matures from there, then in person.

“It depends on our priorities. We have quarterly personal meetings with our key vendors. I prefer doing a video call over just a phone call.”

“Ideally, in person if it’s not cost prohibitive. Otherwise, online meetings are fine.”

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What prompts you to take a meeting with a vendor sales rep (e.g., recommendation by a direct report, boss’s suggestion, significant financial investment, or high risk)?

• Aligns with our strategy
• Contributes to our roadmap
• A potential need
• A relationship worth developing for a project

“If their solution offering matches what I’m looking for, they’re well-known, and my initial research tells me they can help, then that would prompt meeting. Otherwise, no.”

“They have a solution to a problem we’re solving for, and it actually makes sense.”

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What does a salesperson do to win your trust (e.g., demonstrate expertise in my industry or company, show they care about my success, cultivate a personal relationship with me)?

“Not try to sell me.” (majority)

“Open, honest, consistent communication. Following up on deadlines, just the basics.”

“Speak honestly and openly, be transparent, and find ways to add value to our business.”

“They really have to be honest.”

“Stop selling me and just let me decide whether I want that product or not.”

“If you push too hard or you are just there to sell your product and not listen to my pain points and try to tailor and suit them to that, then it’s a turn-off.”

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Besides the sales rep, which other vendor representatives (e.g., product manager, solutions specialist, executive) do you meet with during the purchase decision process?

• Tech developers
• Operations
• Customer success team / training
• Executive team

“The operations team and customer success team. After a deal is signed, usually the sales agent moves to the background and you’re dealing with someone else so we prefer to meet with the team we’ll be working with before we sign a deal.”

“Sales rep, tech, training—to walk through the system, do the demo, answer questions on how we would handle it day-to-day.”

“I like to meet the company’s executive team, and then also who’s actually going to do the work. So when all the stars leave, who do I call Christmas Eve when there’s a problem.”

“On services, it could be the IT team when we talk about things like integration with our ERP system. Sometimes we ask to meet other customers to learn about their experience.”

“Definitely the application engineer and the solution architect.”

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What type of group interactions (e.g., webinars, seminars, conferences) do you find impactful during the purchase process?

“Webinars.” (majority)

“Webinars can be very targeted. So after I know your product, then I can jump on a webinar to gain more knowledge.”

“It’s just so hard to find the time to go to a conference.”

“Conferences are best when you don’t know where to start. In a conference, you get to hear a lot of speakers, you’re going to explore a lot of products.”

“Nothing. I’m not interested in any of it. If it’s something I’m asking that’s unique to our needs, that’s fantastic. But that’s very rare.”

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What third-party influencers (e.g., industry analysts, consultants) do you interact with during the purchase decision process? Which ones are most impactful?

“Typically, only peers. I ask them questions about what they’re doing or for references.”

“I talk to other companies just to get a sense of what they think of it.”

“I’d say any kind of white paper—Gartner, the more research-based.”

“Sometimes we’ll leverage a consultant to help, if it’s highly technical, but for the most part, we don’t.”

What professional associations do you belong to?

• Chief Procurement Officers
• Supply Chain Management
• IoSCM, Institute of Supply Chain Management

“We’re part of professional institutes, but they’re all vertical raw material-related.”

“I wouldn’t say I belong to professional associations, but I am part of a few procurement leader round tables.”

“Yeah, procurement-based organizations. And then for HR, there are professional national and regional organizations our executives are part of.”

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Do you listen to or follow any industry peers, authors, bloggers, or analysts to support your purchasing process?

“No.” (majority)

“The Economist is about the closest I get.”

“Gartner.”

“I would listen to a super-user or an experienced user of that particular technology or that particular area.”

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What conferences or events do you attend and why?

“NRF (National Retail Federation) is probably the only one of any value.”

“NRF is probably the biggest one and just because it’s a conglomeration across many aspects of retail.”

“The Gartner procurement conference for senior leaders. It’s usually a quick day session. A lot of peers are there, a lot of network opportunities, and their topics go 45 minutes with a 15-minute debrief, so you get a lot of volume in a short timeframe.”

“I attend strategic discussions with our key suppliers, both on the indirect and direct side. I attend some of these procurement round tables focused on best practices within the procurement space.”

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Do you go to vendor websites and, if so, why?

“Yeah, all the time, to see how they represent themselves, how they describe their products, who their leaders are, and what their backgrounds are. Yeah, to see what else they offer outside of what we’re buying and I do that a lot.”

“Typically, if it’s during the process and I just I’m looking for information or poking around.”

“I’ll check out websites because you can glean a lot about where these suppliers are heading, some of the things they’ve done, products they’re producing”

“You can get a wealth of information from webinars on vendor websites.”

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Do you participate in or belong to any online communities or forums (e.g., LinkedIn groups)?

“Yes, Accenture’s CPO round table. B-line also has a CPO round table. Coupa has a CPO and procurement leaders’ group, and so does Gartner. So those four.”

“Procurement Foundry and then LinkedIn. Those are the biggest, where all kinds of stuff is flowing all the time.”

“I use LinkedIn, of course. But otherwise, most of my touch points are through round tables.”

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In which social networks are you active for business purposes (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest)?

“LinkedIn.” (universal response)

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How do you use social media when making your purchase decisions?

“We look at insights like company size, revenue, employee list. That’s just helpful, like sizing up who they are.”

“Just basic research.”

“I really don’t do a lot in LinkedIn for purchase decisions. I get pinged cold calls from suppliers asking me to consider them, but I’m more apt to research a company with Google than on LinkedIn.”

“Very rarely. If there’s no other solution I can think of, then I might go to there and search through my connections.”

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Which trade journals or publications do you read?

“Mostly The Economist.”

“CPO, a digital magazine. Gartner sends me a lot of stuff to read.”

“Fastmarkets.”

“None specifically. I follow more of the business world in general versus what’s in trade journals.”

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Do you consider channel partners (e.g., resellers, systems integrators, distributors) useful resources for gathering information, advice, or recommendations?

“Yes. We use a couple channel partners for software. We just have a GBO for other things.”

“Yes, we might buy chemicals and polymers from Dow and BASF and DuPont and many, many suppliers. But we’ll meet on a quarterly basis with some of our key strategic suppliers and learn what’s going on in their industry.”

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If so, how do you use them when considering a purchase?

“In some cases, we have distributors that we sell our products through, but we also use distributors to buy raw materials and products from, so that distribution network on both the selling side and the purchasing side can help us better understand the marketplace.”

“Just for background information.”

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What sources do you trust?

“We have relationships with some big logo consulting firms, like Accenture, EY, and PWC, and I’ll ping them and ask what they see. It’s a good way to get some free information.”

“Reference calls.”

“References. For example, if we’re looking at a Workday or a Salesforce or an O.C. Tanner or a new suppliers in a very large space, we’ll often ask about their clients, and then do a session offline to see how it went for them.”

“We’ll go to research companies like Gartner to understand where a lot of these software-based programs are positioned in their assessment or capability, research dollars, etc.”

“Benchmarking with other similar size businesses that have gone through it in terms of getting some insights as to what they did, how they handled it that kind of thing.”