“Instead of taking an inward look at your sourcing and procurement models, consider the easiest, simplest experience that you can provide to your internal customers.” – Ryan Bradford
Traditionally, procurement would lead a transformation effort with their own expectations, policies, processes, or tools. Then they wouldfocus on how to communicate them across their stakeholder network to drive successful adoption, collaboration, and buy-in. In this model, procurement expected to lay down the rules that internal customers would have to learn how to follow.
What got lost was the customer experience… their needs, perspectives, and challenges. It was difficult for procurement to bring solutions and value to stakeholders when their needs are last on the list of priorities.
In this podcast episode, I spoke with experienced procurement executive and longtime leader Ryan Bradford about the importance of the procurement customer experience, why it’s worth spending so much time and energy on, and what we should be doing differently to create a stronger simpler experience for our internal customers.
Here, in his own words, are some of Ryan’s most powerful insights and recommendations from our conversation on how to design a more intuitive customer experience:
Breaking Down Traditional Barriers
"When we look at sourcing and procurement models, we've taken more of a traditional focus on how others should engage us. ‘This is our process, this is our policy, this is how you engage us, here's our tech, here's our tools.’ What's missing is the customer, our internal customers as well as our external customers."
Putting the Customer First
"Instead of taking an inward look at your sourcing and procurement models, what's that outward look? What I mean by that is what's the easiest, simplest experience that we can provide for our internal customers? Not what we think that they need to do, but from their perspective, what's that easy experience that we can give them to make it easier to engage us and drive more value?"
The Right Way to Deliver “Bad” News
“Your stakeholders want partners. Sometimes you have to tell them bad news or news they might not like, but you also don’t want to be too rigid in your process. Tell them, “I hear you. We can’t do X, but what if we did X plus Y or some combination thereof?” They’ll understand you’re not able to give them exactly what they want, but you’re working with them and solutioning and finding compromise. That goes a long way towards working with your stakeholders and finding a better experience for them.”
Personalize the Customer Experience
“You’re probably going to have some customization for the stakeholder groups. You might have some tweaks along the way, and that’s why any solution that you go through, you need to make sure it’s fit for purpose. Of course, it might look like something you’ve done before, but you want to make sure you’re meeting the needs of your customers.
If you give them a solution that’s too standardized because you want one process and everybody has to follow the same path, it’s not going to be a win.”
Build a Culture of Collaboration
“We’re connectors, we’re collaborators, and we add value across the organization. So, engage a lot and not just with one person. You need to work up the chain, across, and down when you’re working with people in the business. You also need to make sure you’re giving that information to your team, so they’re also able to partner with whomever they’re working directly with.
When you do this, you’re building a larger quorum of individuals as you continue this journey of improving your procurement models and a better customer experience.”
Feedback Fuels a Good Experience
Bring your customers along, especially the ones that are key to you or that you can partner with. You’re coming up with solutions for them, of course, after you’ve done a lot of research and gotten their initial feedback, but bring them along in the journey and get their feedback along the way. You might not nail it the first or second or third time, but what you’ll start to do is tweak it further to something that really works for them to give them that nice, easy experience.”
