Procurement Basics Blog

Procurement is rarely a topic taught at school. Still, thousands of people start their journey into procurement every year. I have created this blog to help them figure out whether this job is for them, and to help with the first steps into this career.

Why Procurement Basics blog

During my career, I hired and trained several procurement teams. And the biggest issue for me was to introduce them to the basics. All these three-letter abbreviations: LPO, PRF, DN, RFQ, RFP. The words that are not familiar to everyone: spend, category. Explaining what is source to procure, procurement to payment. How the whole process works. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of College programs that touch procurement even in a couple of lessons. Also, online courses in this area are quite rare and usually require some kind of basic knowledge.

Learning someone to do is not the difficult part. But making the team member understanding the “why” requires a lot more work. And this is the part where the Procurement leaders, that add value to the company and sit in Managerial boards will differentiate from the buyers who will spend their career negotiating prices.

So, the mission of this blog is to explain in the simplest possible way the basics of procurement. Trying to explain to people who got a job offer or see a chance to move into procurement what and how we do it. Help the ones who are just starting to learn fast and understand the process, rather just doing the movements. You may ask: “Why a blog and not a video, or a course?” Well, this should be some kind of reference, something everyone can go back to remind himself or to explain to a new colleague. A place you visit from time to time to refresh your memory, or to figure out this new way of doing things.

All comments are welcome if there is something you struggle with contact me. While I do not know all the answers, I have a network of a couple of hundreds of Procurement professionals, some at very high positions in Multinational companies. I am quite certain that the answer will be found and we will share it here for the benefit of all.

Secondly, I am inviting all that want to help out with a guest post to contact me. As long as it is around procurement and Supply Chain.

A bit about me

Like most of us, so-called Procurement Professionals, I ended up in procurement by accident. The lady responsible for Purchasing resigned without notice, and one morning I got a bunch of folders and very precise instructions from my Manager:” You are now doing procurement”. After three years spent in the company, I went to banking, which has proven to be too boring for me. Hence took a job in Warehousing and Logistics. A couple of months later got a job offer for a Supply Chain Manager position. And at that time, I had only some rough idea what the Supply Chain Manager does. But I took the leap of faith and eventually fell in love with the job and never looked back. After five years in the position, it was time to connect my practical knowledge with some theoretical foundations. So, I enrolled in a Master’s course in Supply Chain, Logistics and Procurement, and graduated a couple of years later.

For the past couple of years, I am a Chartered Member of CIPS, the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Logistics and work in Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates.

When it comes to personal life, I am married and a father of three beautiful boys. Since 2011 we live in Fujairah, a small town on the east coast of the United Arab Emirates. 

Sources and Links

If you want to see my full LinkedIn profile and connect with me, click below

Zoran Kecman LinkedIn profile