B2B procurement process involves delivery of products and services necessary for proper operation of any company. It usually starts from defining the business needs by internal customers. Their proper involvement may play a key role in procurement projects. It is worth looking closely how everyday cooperation between merchants and the internal customers looks like.

Communication and division of competences are not uniform and are certainly dependent on the specifics of the company, experience in procurements, as well as organizational culture. In some companies, internal customers indicate specific vendors depending on procurement categories. This results from the assumed working method in a given company, internal customers and merchants’ knowledge of the products they buy, as well as the characteristics of the products.

As indicated in the chart below, a situation in which internal customers do not participate in the process of creating specifications or participate occasionally, occurs rarely. In the vast majority of cases, merchants make use of the knowledge of customers when specifying the details of the business needs. On the one hand, such a solution favors better communication with vendors and delivery of such products and services that are expected by internal customers. On the other hand, there is a risk of creating over-specifications, and limiting the competition by excessive influence of traders on the decisions and details of specifications.

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DO INTERNAL CUSTOMERS PARTICIPATE IN THE CREATION OF SPECIFICATONS

Cooperation with internal customers during the procurement process may involve inconveniences associated with deadlines, because it sometimes happens that they set procurement deadlines which are unlikely or even impossible to meet. These inconveniences may result from the lack of understanding of the procurement process by customers and from problems that merchants deal with every day. Moreover, it sometimes happens that merchants have imposed deadlines, which will even more complicate the procurement process and contribute to its lower business efficiency.

It sometimes happens that internal customers participate in negotiations with vendors depending on the procurement value and category, however, from the perspective of merchants, their participation in the process of negotiations is not unequivocally positive. The level of facilitations provided by the engagement of internal customers in the process is indicated as average. Sometimes the participation of internal customers in negotiations with vendors causes mostly difficulties. Only in a limited number of cases the participation of customers definitely facilitates the negotiations with vendors. Increase of negotiation competences of internal customers should be one of the priorities in the improvement of the procurement process.

The knowledge of price-quality ratio of the purchased products and services among the internal customers is their basic competence which influence the procurement process. It is usually only moderate, and sometimes completely insufficient.

The above assessment clearly indicates the need of taking actions oriented at the improvement of competences of merchants towards independent conducting of procurement negotiations or increasing the customers’ competences in terms of business procurement.

Merchants and internal customers, who jointly evaluate vendors represent a popular model of cooperation. Other noticeable models of operation within this scope include a complete freedom of merchants in evaluation of a vendor, and on the other hand keeping this evaluation within the competences of internal customers. However, the last two models provide far less options than combining of the competences of merchants and internal customers in this matter.

The cases where internal customers decide on the selection of vendors depending on the procurement value or category result mostly from the specificity of the purchased product or service.  However, derogations from the above rule sometimes occur. Some organizations withdraw from this commonly accepted model and either leave this so important decision only in the hands of merchants, or only within the scope of responsibilities of internal customers.

The decision-making process will be directly associated with the engagement of the customers in the process of creating specifications, and also in negotiation-related actions during the implementation of the procurement process. Admission of internal customers is not a significant problem in procurements in situations of proper understanding of business aspects, and in particular the already mentioned price-quality ratio.