In a LinkedIn post from a while back, Garry makes a very important point: many procurement operating models still treat buyers as process operators.

Run the event. Collect the bids. Populate the template. Push it through governance. Negotiate hard. Close the file. Move on.

Tech (which may include AI but doesn’t need to as you can do quite a lot with ARPA and do it better, faster, and cheaper than humans AND Gen-AI can do it) will make the traditional buyer role less central because all of this, except for the finer points of negotiation, can be done by the tech. (The brute force points, collecting all the data to defend your offer can be done by the tech.)

Once you adopt Busch-Lamoureux Exact Purchasing, it becomes easy to not only map your categories to the octants, but identify the processes you should use for sourcing and procuring those categories, as well as monitoring the procurement activities to determine if there is a situation where a human has to intervene.

It also becomes clear what you need to do at each step.

• Sourcing: identify what needs to be sourced vs procured, what categories and items will be included in an event, what suppliers, what products, what requirements, etc. etc. etc. — all of the decisions you can’t risk automated (which can still only be automated from encoded knowledge from prior decisions)
• CLM: key contract requirements and acceptance criteria; etc.
• SXM: key (compliance) requirements, key risk mitigation clauses, need for no vs. internal vs. external review, etc.
• Analysis: historical spend/volume/prices; current prices/volume requirements; predicted prices/volume requirements; opportunities for demand shaping/control; etc.
• e-Pro: available channels and under what conditions; what gets in the catalogue; who can buy out-of-catalogue/non-preferred; processes for overrides (to budget limits; cost limits; etc.)
• I2P: m-way match requirements and tolerances; ok-to-pay / auto-pay requirements; when early-payment discounts can be offered/applied; etc.

As Garry states, a buyer is not a buyer — a buyer is a decision architect and makes the decisions necessary for successful Procurement. A decision architect that designs how a decision should be made. An intelligent human who maps the organization’s categories to the pocket cube of Exact Purchasing, determines what can be automated, what systems will be used to automate, what qualifies as exceptions, how those exceptions will be monitored for, and how they will be alerted.

But a buyer is more than that — it’s a decision architect and relationship management. Procurement is about managing stakeholders and suppliers. Dumb systems cannot do that. Only HUMAN INTELLIGENCE can.

In an AI-Hype world, Procurement will be measured on its success, and that success will require Human Intelligence leading Procurement to glory. So acquire real pros if you want to not only survive, but thrive in, the Age of Retardation the AI-Hype is ushering in!