Buyer Analytics

As a way to improve the relationship between business units and the procurement function, a recent Strategy-Business article recommends moving to a "pull-based" procurement services SLA.

The way to increase the value of support services is through pull-based functional relationships. The business units pull services from the infrastructure, specifying their requirements and sometimes co-designing them, instead of having the services pushed on them in a company-wide package.

A well-designed pull-based functional relationship becomes like the relationship between a loyal customer and a regular supplier. The supplier (the functional infrastructure team) cares about the customer’s opinion; the customer (the business unit leader) treats the functional staff as he or she would treat any favored external supplier, not like an internal team forced to jump through hoops.

Here is the link:  http://www.strategy-business.com/resilience/rr00062?pg=all