Twenty years ago we wrote a post on e-Sourcing Resistance and what e-Sourcing is Not. In that post, we began by referencing “The 7 Myths of e-Sourcing” by the great Tim Minahan (before he went over to the dark side), where he tried to dispel the myths.

Since the original myths still persist today, we’ll start by reminding you of those — and then address the new myths that have arose / are arising so you don’t lose the path.

Tim’s Original 7. e-Sourcing is NOT about

• lowering prices: it is about getting the best, fair, price you can get on a product, or service that meets your needs, but not about squeezing supplier margins so thin they go out of business
• unfairness to suppliers: it’s not about forcing out or limiting to preselected suppliers, but creating an open, level, fair playing field
• unfairness to incumbents: it’s not about forcing incumbents out, it’s just about ensuring they also play on a fair, level, playing field
• keeping suppliers out: it’s not about making business more difficult to win, but easier to win
• sales cycle lengthening: it’s about making sourcing processes right-lengthed
• supplier burdening: it’s not about adding costs, technology, or resource requirements — but minimizing the burden on the supplier
• eliminating relationships: it’s about finding the right supplier to build a relationship with

but with the rise of technology, and, AI, in particular, a new set of myths has arisen and needs to be dispelled ASAP. E-Sourcing is NOT an excuse to:

• turn every Procurement event into a(n) (e-)Sourcing Event: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should … most procurements should be off existing contracts, most tail-spend should be spot-buys, and when the volume/cost is enough, simple RFQs; e-Sourcing is for goods and services that are strategic or custom, not tactical or commoditized
• use AI to draft RFPs: with AI, you can draft RFPs, and incorporate as much as you want into those RFPs, and ask as many questions about as many things as you want — this might make your life easier, but it unfairly burdens suppliers when you ask for details you don’t need (at least until you are going to seriously consider them) — plus, AI will hallucinate, ask wrong questions (and then force a follow-up request later when it’s discovered) and waste time on both sides … RFPs need to be human drafted — they should be based on templates (and assembled using non-LLM AIs), and AI should be used to judge completeness, clarity, etc — and even recommend gaps to fill in (because, when well trained, 90% accuracy can be useful), but AI should never lead
• use AI to conduct events agentically: AI should be used to automate the tactical, but humans need to be engaged at every decision point
• use the same process for every event: some events should be simple one-shot mini-RFPs just to verify key product/service requirements; some events should be moderate two-stage RFI/RFPs to ensure the suppliers meet mandatory organizational requirements; others deep three-stage RFI/RFP/RFQ processes to first verify suppliers, than products and services, then BAFO pricing so complete information is known before a decision is made

e-Sourcing is about right-sized efficient execution of strategic sourcing events for both sides, nothing more, nothing less.