Tomorrow is Bad Buying Publication Day – But It’s About “Good Buying” too!

It’s tomorrow!  Just over 18 months since I started writing Bad Buying – How Organisations Waste Billions Through Failures, Frauds, and F*ck-ups, it will hit the shops and virtual shops tomorrow.

And right on time, a new example of what might be Bad Buying with serious public consequences has hit the headlines, with pharmaceutical firm Roche telling the UK National Health Service that it can’t supply kits for Covid and other testing purposes.  

This is apparently because of a problem Roche has experienced with a new warehouse, but that is rather vague. Has the firm lost physical stock in the transfer? Has some sort of automated equipment broken down? Or is it systems issue, as it so often the case these days?  In any case, it would be surprising if Roche didn’t have a supplier of some sort to share the blame. Then there is the question of why the NHS appears to be so reliant on one supplier for such crucial items, but we’ll come back to all that another day.

Back to the book. After chapters describing failures and frauds, with dozens of case studies to illustrate the points, the final chapter provides “ten principles for good buying”.  As the book is aimed at a wide range of managers and professionals, not just procurement experts, those of you who proudly wear the MCIPS badge may find some of these a little obvious.

For instance, For everything you buy, consider how that item or spend category contributes towards strategic goals, and conduct buying appropriately.

Well of course. But how many CEOs, CFOs or indeed budget holding managers generally really understand that?  (One of my wilder thoughts is that procurement leaders might buy a copy of the book for each of their senior internal stakeholders… well, you can live in hope!)  The need for good data is another reasonably “obvious” principle.

But there are couple of principles that may be more thought-provoking, even for the procurement world. And the final one is perhaps the most important of all  – Everyone who plays a role in the buying process must be appropriately knowledgeable and skilled to get the most out of your suppliers.  

As I say, “From the technologist who specifies the new IT system to the accounts clerk who checks invoice payments, from the CEO who gives consulting contracts to her friends to the regional manager who fails to manage a difficult services supplier in his region, a large organisation will have thousands of staff involved in what I’ve called the buying process.  Indeed, every time someone in your organisation talks to someone in a supplier organisation, the conversation is potentially part of the negotiation process – and sometimes, it can be a critical part”. 

I think having a good procurement function has even given some organisations a false sense of security, with CEO’s thinking, “we must be OK, our procurement director has won awards and her team is involved in most of what we buy”. But even the best procurement function won’t save you from disaster if others have no idea what they are doing, which is why the book is aimed at that wider audience, whilst I hope still having enough serious content to appeal to the professionals!   

So, if you haven’t ordered yet, check out the links here. (In fact, one friend tells me his book arrived yesterday). There is also a podcast now (“Peter Smith’s Bad Buying podcast”) and the first two episodes, around 15-20 minutes each, are available on most podcast platforms.

There is even a Bad Buying playlist on Spotify (all my section titles in the book are also song titles …) It is a “diverse” playlist, as my daughter described it, but I’ll take that as a compliment!  You can make your own judgment on that.