What Do You Mean, Communication?

I've been watching a poll over at the LinkedIn Strategic Sourcing & Procurement, asking the question: 

We identified 5 reasons for non-compliant (off contract) purchasing, what do you think is the number one reason?

The identified 5 reasons are:

1. Poor communication of existing contracts
2. Specialised supply requirements
3. Buyer preferences
4. Category or organisational volatility
5. Low software/process adoption

The overwhelming choice (at this point in the polling) is "Poor Communication" (53%).  Really?  Let's break that down here.  

Here's an analogy:  Former Ohio State football coach Woody Hayes said that he didn't like the forward pass because " 'There are three things that can happen when you pass, and two of them ain't good".  This is the issue with communication.  In order to have communication, someone has to talk, someone has to listen, and what is communicated has to make sense to both.  Otherwise (back to Woody Hayes), it's an incomplete pass.

I personally think that saying the issue is  'communication' is nothing more than making excuses for poor process.  You can 'communicate' until you are blue in the face, but if the person you are 'communicating' a) isn’t listening, b) doesn't understand you, or c) doesn't WANT to understand you, then where do you go from there?

The best way to eliminate non-compliant purchasing is to institute a system that prevents buyers from making non-compliant purchases.  This can be done by 'locking out' the ability to make these purchases, there are any number of ways.

Better than that, what if you had a system that created a compelling market place environment?  Something that provided choice, ease of use, an 'Amazon' or 'Google' like user interface that, behind the scenes, insured compliance by only allowing your chosen suppliers and contracts to be available?

Now that would not only insure compliance, it would make corporate procurement as enjoyable as B to C online shopping!  If only someone could provide that? Oh, wait, we did!

-Rick Franzosa
VP Client Solutions