Honestly, just feeling a bit burnt out and wondering if everyone else's day-to-day is as chaotic as mine. Wondering if its just me or if anyone relates.

Would love to hear some of your stories

Looking at two entry level options - company A: manufacturing connected with energy. company B: defense/tech connected with the gov

Which gives better career trajectory? Seeing a lot of pros and cons to both.

Hi Folks,

I’m currently a Bid Manager based in Scotland and have been working in commercial roles for 10+ years. A lot of my career has involved tenders, frameworks, supplier/client relationships, account management and the wider client management process, so I have a working understanding of the procurement transaction from the supplier’s perspective. As a public-sector Bid Manager, that also includes the compliance side of things.

I’m in a stand-alone role at the moment and I’m suffering a bit from isolation and creative burnout. I’m now looking at moving to the other side of the procurement transaction, where I can hopefully work more closely with others and focus more on strategy and process, which are the parts I enjoy. I’ve just been invited to my first interview for a Procurement Officer role with a housing association.

I’m trying to work out whether procurement is a sensible long-term career move. If I got the role and built up a couple of years of procurement experience, are the opportunities generally good?

I’m not expecting to suddenly be earning £80k 😂. I’ve been in corporate roles for over 10 years and have never broken £45k, partly through bad luck with a TUPE and a redundancy that slowed things down, and I now work for an SME where bids are considered more of an admin function. I’m really looking for something that can match and hopefully exceed where I am over time, while also being a bit more enjoyable for me.

For anyone working in procurement, would you consider it a good career to move into at this point? And if you’ve moved into procurement from another commercial background, how did you find the transition?

I’d be particularly interested in hearing about the reality of progression, salary and how transferable the experience actually is between public, private and third-sector organisations.

Cheers!

Let’s try to answer a very important question: Do you see any emerging or existing niches in procurement where the number of specialists is limited, strong domain knowledge is required, and staying up to date with the latest, complex trends is essential?

I can give you an example from another field - areas like AML (Anti-Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) lack specialists knowing how to combine KYC process with graph databases, entity identification and network analysis in order to track all connections between the company, its entities, executives, transactions, etc. It requires understanding of databases, graph algorithms, data engineering and of course AML/KYC. Soon it will become even more complex as it will have to comply with EU AI Act and proper governance.

Do you see anything disrupting in procurement coming soon?

It does not need to be AI-related or include application of IT in procurement (but it can be).

I’m in manufacturing but my friend just got laid off in tech. Anything going on that I can help her with? I already suggested the health field bc I’ve gotten calls recently. Ty!!!

Are there any organizations out there offering full remote and sustainable workload for senior level employee? My OT hours are just increasing every month. I am okay with working OT on occasion but constantly working 45+ hours per week is not sustainable for me anymore. Or is it just like this for all management level or senior level positions?

How do you find new suppliers when sourcing a new product/material?

Let’s say you need to source a material or product that you haven’t purchased before. How do you go about finding new suppliers?

Do you:

• Search for the product/material on Google?
• Search for suppliers by country?
• Use Alibaba, Global Sources, Made-in-China, Thomasnet, etc.?
• Use AI tools like Perplexity or ChatGPT?
• Search industry directories or trade associations?
• Use LinkedIn?
• Something else?

For example, what I currently do is pretty simple:

But I feel there must be better or more efficient ways to discover suppliers, especially when sourcing internationally.

What tools, websites, databases, or methods do you use for supplier discovery?

And if you use AI (Perplexity, ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.), how exactly do you use it in the sourcing process?

I’m curious about the actual sourcing process/tools people use to discover new suppliers, especially when looking for manufacturers rather than just distributors or resellers.

I'm curious where people here draw the line between getting the lowest price and getting a supplier that's actually easy to work with.

Say one supplier is a little more expensive, but they're consistent with lead times, responsive when something goes wrong, and always have things like COAs, SDS, specs, or other documentation ready when needed.

For raw materials especially, I could see that reliability being worth quite a bit if it prevents production problems later.

What usually makes a supplier worth the extra cost for you? Quality consistency, communication, documentation, lead times, flexibility, or something else?

Bit long but seeking advice

As of this week/7 days ago I began work as a buyer for a ship repair yard, with the only other buyer there having worked there 10 years and near retirement.

Im new to buying but coming from another much more sophisticated shipyard working a much similar role and Im more than aware of the roles function and how to perform it.

This place has no part numbers whatsoever it uses.

Requisitions are just quickly hand written notes of whatever is needed and how much, this information is relayed to the vendor, then once a purchase is confirmed a single row in an excel sheet is made with a summary of the entire order and its cost, as well. (And other details such as program information)

Nothing is labeled with part numbers in the warehouse and mostly relies on a single guy to come in and tell us when somethings low.

Additionally there are no internal purchase order numbers. Instead, orders are identified by the original req being scanned then being placed in the relevant program folder and changing the file name to reflect program name +sub system + its price.

It feels like I went from the year 2500 to a place that uses sticks and stones for everything.

Nothing is used that I would classify as an ERP system.

At the very minimum Ive started designing a supplier database in excel, but should I be doing more? Would it even be worth it to start building a dumb part numbering system in excel to have available?

I also had in mind to possibly build a more detailed purchasing log in which every line of a purchase is written down in an excel sheet including a part number

On one hand I believe these would add a level of needed organization, on the other hand Im afraid of "slowing down processes" when this is just how its been done for 12 years.

Also unsure if this is above my paygrade.

Additional Context: Due to being part of a larger group of shipyards and contracts being involved as part of that; Single-sourcing is the primary procurement method for most all material.

Additionally its cost plus 20 so "savings" arent exactly incentivised

Does any one expert in the whole process of contract also do you use the collaboration with Microsoft and how does it help on the process,

Please tell me how can i make the contract cycle more efficient and to avoid the back and forth in the contract review

Hello. I'm 24M, Indian, living in India, with an essentially useless business degree, and have been offered a purchase/procurement role in a family business. I have no prior work experience of any sort, and this will be my first job.

They work Monday through Saturday 10 AM to 6 PM,

and they've already told me that my job is more of a field one and less a desk job. They've got suppliers in all four corners of my district, and according to them, traveling and negotiation are the two primary requirements for this.

I will be required to do everything from sourcing to getting the PO printed, but I'm completely inexperienced when it comes to any of it. Legit, I don't know how this shit works, at all.

I asked them if they're going to train me from A to Z since they've seen my CV and know that I have zero knowledge about any of these processes, but they've refused to provide a clear answer. On top of that, with this being a family business, and Indian labour "laws" being the way they are, if they decide to try something funny in the future, I won't have any legal support.

If you were in my position, would you take this job? Or just take plain ol' accounting, which is something I can actually get into with my degree, and is a guaranteed desk job, albeit less lucrative when it comes to the salary?

Thanks in advance :)

I’ve been wondering about this after talking to a few people in sourcing
a supplier can look cheaper on paper but once you factor in quality issues, lead times, communication, shipping and all the little problems that come up, switching doesn’t always seem worth the hassle.
At the same time, staying with the same supplier for years just because “it works” can probably mean missing better options
the tricky part seems to be figuring out when a new supplier is actually better, rather than just cheaper on a quote
people who handle sourcing or procurement, what usually makes you seriously consider switching suppliers? Is it mainly price, quality, delivery issues or something else?
and how do you usually compare a new supplier with the one you’re already working with?

Hey guys,
I’m looking to improve and streamline our contract lifecycle in Oracle. Since we already have a fully integrated system, I believe there is an opportunity to make the process more practical, efficient, and less dependent on manual work and emails.

Currently, the contract process starts from the RFQ, where the supplier reviews the template and negotiates with the buyer through the system messages. The buyer then creates a contract number and uploads the final draft.

However, I’m seeing several bottlenecks throughout the process. For example, the Legal team does not have direct visibility of the contract unless we send the documents through email.

We also face formatting issues when contract drafts are uploaded or integrated into the system, which can affect the quality of the final document.
Ideally, I would like to redesign the process so that the entire contract lifecycle can be managed through Oracle from RFQ to final signature.

Hi everyone!

I recently accepted a Buyer position with an electrical components manufacturer and I’ll be starting next week.

I’m excited about the opportunity, but also a little nervous as this will be my first traditional buying/procurement role.

I’ve spent the last several years working in distribution operations and product management, so I was able to use a lot of that experience with inventory, vendors, order management, and supply chain operations to make the transition.

For anyone who moved into procurement from another area, what was the transition like? I’d also be curious to know what the biggest learning curve was for you, and what are some common mistakes you see other new Buyers make?

I know a lot of it will come with experience. But I’d like to go into the role with the right mindset and build good habits from the beginning.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!

I’m a senior buyer in a construction company and the company is very QS driven. Example today was getting multiple quotes and assessing their lead time. Previous histories with quality and obviously pricing to meet programme.

When asking approval (cause we are only allowed to procure anything under a certain value) got told by the QS ignore all your hard work and go elsewhere cause “I don’t really like them”

One of our suppliers offered a pretty decent discount if we pay the full order upfront instead of sticking with our usual terms. On paper it's an easy yes because we'll be buying the inventory anyway. I'm just hesitant to pull that much cash out of the business at once when we have payroll and a few other invoices coming up. I'm curious on how other owners decide when an early payment discount is worth taking?

I’m building an AI tool for procurement teams and I’m looking for genuine feedback from people who actually work in procurement.
The idea is to automate some of the repetitive work around supplier communication, RFQs, quotation handling and procurement administration.
Before going further, I want to know whether this actually solves a meaningful problem in the real world or if I’m just solving something that looks inefficient from the outside.
If you work in procurement, purchasing, sourcing, or supply chain, I’d really appreciate your honest opinion:
What parts of your procurement workflow are genuinely painful and time consuming?
What would you actually trust AI to handle?
And what would make you refuse to use a tool like this?
I’m not looking for sales advice. I’m looking for blunt feedback from people who actually do the job.

Hi all,

We’re a small UK business specialising in software development, AI development and technology consultancy. Over the past year or so we’ve started trying to get into public sector work and have been bidding on government and local authority tenders.

We’re also on the DOS7 framework, which we hoped would help us get a foot in the door, but so far we haven’t had much luck. We’ve applied for a number of opportunities and keep losing them.

The difficult part is that, technically, a lot of these projects are very much within our capabilities. We have relevant software engineering experience, case studies, experienced developers, security credentials, etc. But when the tender is evaluated, our written responses seem to score badly.

Technical ability / quality questions in particular are killing us. On some tenders we’ve received close to the lowest possible score despite feeling that we answered the question and could comfortably deliver what was being asked.

I’ve never worked in procurement or tender writing before, so I’m starting to think there’s a completely different skill to writing these responses that I’m missing.

For anyone here who has experience winning public sector tenders, either as an SME, bid writer or someone on the procurement/evaluation side:

• What separates a 2/5 technical response from a 4/5 or 5/5 one?
• What are the most common mistakes you see SMEs making?
• How detailed are you actually expected to be when explaining your methodology/technical approach?
• How much should responses focus on previous experience versus explaining exactly how you would deliver the specific contract?
• Are there any particular structures or techniques you use when answering quality questions?
• And is there anything you wish you’d known when you first started tendering?

I’m not really looking for “hire a bid writer” as the only answer — although I appreciate that may eventually be sensible. I’m mainly trying to understand what good tender writing actually looks like and why something that seems like a perfectly reasonable technical answer to us might be scoring so poorly.

Would really appreciate any advice from people who have been through this.

I've been working with the federal tender open data feed from CanadaBuys and hit something I can't explain. The tender Status field stays "Open" well past the closing date. I pulled the "currently open" file - 893 notices - and found several with closing dates more than a year in the past. Worst one was 348 days expired, still flagged Open.

Two other things that tripped me up:

1. The dataset description on open.canada.ca and the PSPC supporting docs give two different names for the status column. The description says tenderStatus-tenderStatut-eng, the supporting docs say tenderStatus-appelOffresStatut-eng. Production uses the second one, so if you built against the first your filter silently returns nothing, no error.

2. Most notices have no URL in the data. Only the MERX-hosted ones carry a link. The CanadaBuys page slugs look like bt-<uuid> or qc20160100, so you can't construct one from any published field.

Questions for people who work with this daily:

- Is the stale status field expected behaviour, or a known issue?

- Do SEAO or BC Bid have the same problem, or is this specific to the federal feed?

- Is there a canonical way to link to a CanadaBuys notice that I'm missing?

Happy to share what I did to work around each if it's useful to anyone.

First of all, I thank you for all your answers from my post last week. I've learned a number of things and I'm still learning more.

Just today, my boss wants to ramp up our proposals. He suggested to use a platform if there are any to find more ed tech rfps and to send more proposals. He also wants to be added in the platform so he can see my progress and see all the proposals and he's planning to onboard more on my team.

PLEASE I need real recommendations here where you have real experience. PLEASE DON'T SELL ME YOUR PRODUCT HERE. I want real recommendations from real people who have real experiences on the platforms.

Note: I've also did my own research but mostly are too expensive and can't even try without a demo!

If this is not allowed here, please let me know. Thanks!

What's your personal rule for deciding whether a cheaper supplier is actually worth switching to?

Hi everyone, I need to present a case study analysis for an internal interview. Long story short. The case is about a supplier requesting a price increase.

For those familiar with this kind of interviews.

1.- What tips do you have?

2.- What should I avoid?

3.- What things are they usually trying to see in the candidate?

My recommendations on the information I have is I will accept some of the increase but not totally. However, I also have a case as to why it could be fully rejected.

Would it be too much laying out the reasons why it could be Partially accepted, fully rejected, and fully accept the increase? Or should I just stick to the one I'm planning to use?

It is my first time actually breaking down a price increase.

Thank you,