Centralized procurement involves multiple functions and significantly changes the way companies do things. It is a substantial change. As a change agent, procurement needs to demonstrate leadership, which is more of a leadership challenge.

First, we need to put ourselves in the shoes of others, look at existing problems objectively, and understand the challenges and demands of stakeholders.

For example, from current perspective, purchasing people may not understand why there are multiple designs for parts with very similar functions; but there are probably reasons for the diverse designs back then, such as when a new product had quality problems and the designers wanted to improve the performance through minor design changes, but later found that the effect was minimal and it increased the complexity of the product. If purchasing staff thinks they are smarter than the designers and the designers don’t know what they are doing, then cooperation with the design department is doomed to be bumpy. Without the support of the designers, centralized purchasing probably won’t go very far.

For example, as a purchaser, you must know the benefits of centralized purchasing. So why are two parts with similar functions and processes made by two different suppliers? There may be many reasons. Perhaps one supplier had limited production capacity at the time; perhaps both suppliers were very small at the time, and it was difficult to see that one would have a better development prospect than the other; perhaps the geographical requirements for timely delivery and the two suppliers in different places just support the factories located in two places.

Looking at previous decisions with a critical attitude after the fact is often one-sided and unfair. This is not conducive to team building: the parties involved and decision makers at the time may very well be the internal users and partners of centralized procurement now. Learning to look forward can often better unite the masses and solve problems. On the contrary, nitpicking and completely denying previous practices often arouses rebellious psychology, which ultimately leads to the failure of centralized procurement.