Mark Gregory Marquez Balean, CPCSL, CPP

NOT every spend problem is procurement's fault. This infographic shows what procurement can and cannot control: Sourcing & Selection ↳ Can control: The sourcing strategy, supplier selection criteria, and RFx process. ↳ Cannot control: Which suppliers exist in the market and their underlying capabilities. Contracting & Commercials ↳ Can control: The negotiation of contract terms, pricing structures, SLAs, and legal protections. ↳ Cannot control: Market price volatility, supplier cost bases, and global commodity prices. Internal Procurement Processes ↳ Can control: Procurement policies, approval workflows, and compliance frameworks. ↳ Cannot control: How consistently internal stakeholders follow those processes without pushback. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM) ↳ Can control: The cadence and structure of supplier engagement, performance reviews, and escalation routes. ↳ Cannot control: A supplier’s internal decisions — leadership changes, financial health, or operational disruptions. Spend & Category Strategy ↳ Can control: How spend categories are structured, monitored, and opportunities identified. ↳ Cannot control: Business-driven demand volume, timing, or preference for specific suppliers. Rist Mitigation Tactics ↳ Can control: Proactively identifying supplier risks and contingency plans, and building governance structures. ↳ Cannot control: Broader macro risks like geopolitical events, regulatory changes, or natural disasters. Do you agree? What did I miss?

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Procurement teams deliver more than just hard savings — and it’s time Finance recognized that. 💰 Hard Savings are easy to quantify and quick to celebrate: ✔ Price reductions ✔ Lower quotes through negotiations ✔ Competitive bidding outcomes ✔ Switching to lower-cost alternatives These directly reduce the bottom-line spend and show up clearly in the P&L. But they’re not the whole picture. 🔍 Soft Savings are harder to measure — but often just as valuable: 🛑 Cost Avoidance – Preventing price increases or locking rates in inflationary markets 🔁 Process Efficiencies – Saving time through automation, freeing up resources 💡 Value-Adds – Extended warranties, better payment terms, free upgrades ⚠ Risk Mitigation – Avoiding disruption or penalties through smarter contracts 🌱 Sustainability & ESG Alignment – Often not cost-saving upfront, but brand- and future-proofing in the long term Just because soft savings don’t reflect in the ledger immediately doesn’t mean they aren’t real. The challenge — and opportunity — for Procurement leaders is to: ✔ Track soft savings systematically ✔ Tie them to business outcomes ✔ Educate stakeholders on their strategic value Procurement should not be seen as just a cost-cutter. We are value creators. And value isn’t always a number on a balance sheet. 💬 How does your organization recognize soft savings? Time to shift the mindset? #ProcurementLeadership #SoftSavings #HardSavings #ValueCreation #ProcurementAndFinance #StrategicSourcing #ProcurementTransformation #BeyondCostSavings

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🛑 Procurement is Not a Support Function — It’s a Strategic Lever Let’s break a long-standing illusion: Procurement is not the team you call when you need to “just place an order.” It’s not the department you loop in after the technical specs are ready. It’s not an admin cost center. 💣 Procurement is a battlefield for margins, risk, and reputation. Here’s what many still ignore: 🔹 Your project’s delays? Trace them — you’ll often find broken procurement timelines. 🔹 Your vendor disputes? Dig deeper — poor contract terms, weak onboarding, or unaligned expectations. 🔹 Your cost overruns? Hello, sourcing strategy and supply market blindness. 👊 Great companies don’t push procurement to the side — they put it at the strategy table. They know that: ✅ Smart procurement doesn’t chase the lowest price — it builds the right partnerships. ✅ Strategic sourcing reduces future firefighting. ✅ Commercial clarity drives technical excellence. 💥 If your procurement team still reports into “general admin,” you’re not just behind — you’re vulnerable. Want innovation? Stability? Resilience? T hen stop treating procurement as a reactive function — and start empowering it as a proactive force. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To learn more about EPC Procurement, please sign up our course and refer the book. 🎓Course: Advanced Diploma in Procurement for EPC Construction Project https://lnkd.in/gUWQ3YrP 📚Books: 📌Procurement Key Concepts in Engineering & Construction https://lnkd.in/geCskigy 📌Short Handbook on Role of Procurement in EPC Projects https://lnkd.in/gsWFYdNh YouTube Channel: https://lnkd.in/gCXXgDFd 📢 Stay updated with our latest insights, updates, and opportunities! Join our 𝑾𝒉𝒂𝒕𝒔𝑨𝒑𝒑 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒏𝒆𝒍 now to be part of our growing community. https://lnkd.in/gT7ed_Sd

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Purchasing Vs Procurement One is transactional. The other is strategic. ✅ Purchasing = orders, receipts, payments. 🚀 Procurement = strategy, suppliers, negotiations, long-term value. Purchasing gets you the product. Procurement gets you the best product, best value, best partnership. If your business treats procurement as just “buying,” you’re missing the bigger picture. #Procurement #Purchasing #SupplyChain

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Procurement is not supply planning. And supply planning is not procurement. But let’s be honest: Too many teams still blur the lines. And that confusion? It’s costing time, money, and trust. Let’s break it down, clearly and practically. While these two functions work hand-in-hand, they have fundamentally different goals, inputs, and outputs. Here’s the truth: 🔹 Supply Planning is about what, when, and how much to produce or buy. 🔹 Procurement is about from whom, at what cost, and under what conditions. One is about balancing inventory, demand, and capacity. The other is about supplier strategy, contracts, and cost management. Different missions. Different skill sets. Different KPIs. 👉 Supply planners think in forecasts, inventory turns, and service levels. 👉 Procurement pros think in sourcing risk, payment terms, and COGS. Yet they both feed the same engine: business continuity and resilience. So here’s what great supply chain leaders do: ✅ Draw a hard line between the two, but foster tight collaboration ✅ Set shared goals but clarify distinct responsibilities ✅ Invest in tools that serve both functions, but train teams differently Stop expecting planners to negotiate contracts. Stop asking buyers to validate forecast bias. Respect the specialization and watch performance take off. How clearly are these roles defined in your organization? Or are your teams still stuck wearing two hats? Repost 🔁 to share with your network or follow us for daily procurement inspiration. PS: Stop wasting hours on generic procurement training. Join Procurement Tactics for role-based learning journeys that turn ambitious teams into strategic partners — every minute counts.

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Cost-per-hire: right or wrong metric? The answer is both—and mostly incomplete. Cost-per-hire (CPH) serves as a useful procurement metric, indicating what you paid to acquire talent. However, it does not reveal the value of that talent, the speed at which they create impact, or the duration of that impact. Where CPH is right: - High-volume, repeatable roles with stable playbooks - Mature pipelines where time-to-ramp is predictable - Benchmarking vendors and process efficiency Where CPH becomes wrong (or dangerous): - Scarce, high-leverage skills - Transformational or turnaround mandates where speed to impact matters - Leadership roles, new markets, Tier-2 expansions, complex hybrid setups What to measure alongside (or instead of) CPH—a scoreboard for value, not just cost: - Time-to-Capability (TtC): Days from start to first measurable business outcome. - Capability Density: Value delivered per FTE/per team (impact per head, not heads per seat). - Early Tenure Yield (0–180 days): % of hires hitting agreed outcomes by month 6. - Tenure of Impact: Months a hire sustains peak contribution (beyond mere retention). - Capability ROI: Business value delivered ÷ total talent investment (sourcing + onboarding + enablement). - Internal Mobility Velocity: Median time to next role/skill—your engine for building the “next 90%”. A 60-second example: - Hire A: CPH $5k, TtC 90 days - Hire B: CPH $15k, TtC 30 days If the role is worth ~$100k/month in protected revenue, product velocity, or risk reduction, B’s 60-day faster impact ≈ $200k value. Paying an additional $10k CPH to unlock $200k sooner is not “more expensive —it’s better capital allocation. My view: CPH isn’t “wrong”; it’s insufficient. Great TA leaders pair cost discipline with capability economics—optimizing for Time-to-Capability, Capability Density, and Tenure of Impact. That’s how talent moves from a line item to an advantage. The real question for talent and business leaders: Are you optimizing for cheap hires—or for enterprise advantage?

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A Head of Procurement was let go after delivering record cost savings. The board meeting was tense. “Procurement hit all their KPIs. Why is this even on the agenda?” Then the supplier performance dashboard came up. Fifty contracts renegotiated. Thirty-five key vendors underperformed or failed. Savings had been prioritized over everything. Lowest bids won—regardless of reliability. What followed: missed deadlines, poor quality, production delays. Suppliers that looked cheap on paper but cost the company far more in execution. Operations were in chaos trying to recover. Hidden costs piled up—rush fees, downtime, lost trust. Procurement spend? Down 12%. Operational losses? Up 25%. What looked like success was actually draining the business. The procurement process was overhauled: • Focus on total cost of ownership • Strategic supplier vetting • Cross-functional sourcing decisions • Risk assessments built into every contract Fewer contracts were signed the next quarter—but outcomes improved. Supplier reliability went up. Operational efficiency rebounded. The new approach spent more upfront—and delivered double the value. Don’t celebrate savings. Measure business impact. Cut costs the wrong way, and you’re not optimizing—you’re sabotaging. P.S. Want to build a high-impact procurement strategy? DM to send you the blueprint

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