Our Toxic Ex

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In Today's Issue

• The Quiet Fix - THE ROI OF SAYING NO

• The Tech Bit - THE EXCEL GAP

• My Best Post Lately

• Free Template of the Week

The Quiet Fix

THE ROI OF SAYING NO

Procurement has a dirty little secret…

We run RFPs like we’re on commission.

Someone in Marketing wants a new agency? RFP.
IT needs to renew a SaaS licence? RFP.
Facilities asks for three office chairs and a potted plant? Guess what. RFP.

It’s the corporate equivalent of hitting “Reply All”: nobody really benefits, but it makes you look busy.

I truly believe not every RFP should exist. In fact, I’d argue most don’t.

In my experience…

I’ve seen more RFPs than episodes of Bluey (and that’s saying something with two small children). And honestly at least 30% of them should have been stopped before they ever got a SharePoint folder.

Here’s what usually happens:

• Six weeks of work

• Twenty people in meetings

• One hundred supplier questions (half of which are “Can you clarify Q27 in the pricing sheet?”)

• And the winner is… the incumbent.

Congratulations, you’ve just spent a month proving what you already knew.

Why “yes” is expensive

The hidden cost of these zombie RFPs is massive:

• Hours: Gartner estimates a mid-complex RFP eats ~200 combined hours. That’s a whole month you could have spent doing something genuinely strategic (or at least going for a walk).

• Supplier goodwill: vendors don’t love playing Hunger Games for business they were always going to lose. Next time you really need competition, they’ll remember.

• Stakeholder trust: run enough pointless sourcing events and your colleagues start treating procurement like the admin department with better PowerPoint skills.

When to pull the plug

Here’s how I decide whether to kill an RFP:

• Incumbent advantage is unshakeable: If switching costs make change impossible, stop wasting everyone’s time.

• Spend is tiny: Do you really need 50 suppliers to quote on £30k worth of chairs? (Spoiler: no.)

• Market is constrained: If there are three suppliers globally, it’s not an RFP, it’s a “checking you’re still alive” email.

• Timing is wrong: Markets shift. Locking in at the wrong moment is worse than waiting.

The ROI of “no”

The upside of saying no is humongous.

• You free up time for deals where competition matters.

• You build credibility by showing stakeholders you care about outcomes, not box-ticking.

• You stop burning supplier goodwill like it’s free office stationery.

The uncomfortable truth

Procurement has confused activity with value. Running lots of RFPs doesn’t make you strategic. It just makes you tired.

The real skill is knowing when not to play.

So next time someone dumps an RFP request on your desk, try the radical move: just say no.

(And then enjoy the novelty of having an afternoon free. Maybe even enough time to read one of those supplier slide decks before deleting it?)

The Tech Bit

THE EXCEL GAP

Here’s a universal truth:

Procurement could be handed the fanciest tech stack on earth, AI copilots, predictive dashboards, a platform with more acronyms than NASA… and someone will still ask: “But can we export it to Excel?”

And the answer is always yes.

Because of course it is.

It has to be. If it isn’t, the system is basically dead on arrival.

I’ve seen this often.

Shiny new tool goes live and people clap politely.

Then, within two weeks, everyone’s quietly back in spreadsheets, living their best colour-coded life.

Why Excel is Procurement’s Toxic Ex

We know it’s not perfect. We know it crashes right when we need it most but we keep coming back. Why?

1. Speed: No loading screens. No “please wait while your request is processed.” Just instant gratification.

2. Flexibility: Want to pivot spend by supplier, region, and who bought the most printer ink in Q2? Five minutes and a coffee.

3. Control: You own the file. You can format it, break it, resurrect it. Try doing that in Ariba.

Excel is the toxic ex we can’t quit: terrible for our long-term health, but God, does it feel good in the moment.

The Billion-Pound Awkward Silence

This is what I call The Excel Gap.

The chasm between the digital dream companies buy and the reality people live in.

Vendors will tell you “Excel is legacy.”
Users will tell you “Excel is life.”

And frankly, Procurement quietly agrees with the users.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve sat in a steering committee where the CIO proudly showcases a futuristic dashboard… only for the head of procurement to pull out the real numbers from a pivot table someone built at 2am.

My Point of View

I’m sorry if I hurt anyone’s feelings but the Excel Gap isn’t a failure of procurement. It’s a failure of tech.

Until platforms can deliver speed, flexibility, and control on par with Excel, the gap stays.

Not “almost as good.”

Not “good enough if you retrain everyone.”

Exactly as good. With better governance, collaboration, and ideally fewer crashes.

Until then Excel isn’t going anywhere.

And maybe that’s fine. Because at least when Excel fails, you can just swear at your laptop.

When the £10m platform fails, you have to book a governance meeting.

My Best Post Lately

7 NEGOTIATION FRAMEWORKS

Procurement loves to say “negotiation is an art.”

Which is convenient, because most of us prepare for it like we’re doodling on a napkin.

Last year’s contract pulled from a dusty folder? Check.
A pricing model that’s more guesswork than maths? Check.
Blind optimism that the supplier won’t notice? Double check.

Spoiler: they notice. Always.

That’s what I wrote about in my recent post and apparently it hit a nerve, because the comments section filled up faster than an inbox after year-end close.

My point was very simple.

Negotiation is won (or lost) before you walk into the room. It’s about who’s rehearsed their playbook, knows their fallback, and actually remembers what BATNA stands for without Googling it on the way in.

To make it easier, I pulled together 7 frameworks every procurement person should have on hand. They are just the practical levers I’ve used to stop a deal from slipping away.

This week’s freebie includes the full hi-def PDF version of it, because if we’re going to keep calling negotiation an “art,” the least we can do is give you sharper crayons

READ THE FULL POST →

Free Template(s) of the week 

MY BEST EVER NEGOTIATION TOOLKIT

This one has literally been years in the making.

I didn’t just whip up a clause library over a weekend with too much coffee and a free Canva template. (If only….!)

This is the product of a procurement career’s worth of blood, sweat, and “track changes.”

Across different roles, I collected and tested templates. Some brilliant, some… less so.

I took the best bits, cut the bad one out, and refined them over weeks until this toolkit felt like something I’d actually trust my own team to use.

The Clause Library is especially close to home. I built it slowly, over many years, using it to train my teams and sharpen their negotiation edge.

Legal acumen isn’t optional in procurement.

It’s one of the skills that makes you stand out, both in front of stakeholders and when you’re up for your next role.

Anyone can talk about “cost savings” but not everyone can explain why a liability cap clause is about more than just fine print.

So, what you’re getting here is:

• A Negotiation Template you can actually use (not one of those “fill in your hopes and dreams” sheets).

• A Clause Library built from real negotiations and refined for impact.

Basically, it’s the kit I wish I’d had earlier in my career minus the war stories and late-night calls with legal.

⚡ One catch: this freebie will only be available for 4 days (not the usual week). It’s also the most valuable item I’ve ever shared, so download it now, before it disappears.

Download my Ultimate Negotiation Toolkit here.

A Final Note

I’ll leave you with a quote that’s been stuck in my head this week:

On paper, that sounds profound but in practice, a lot like procurement.

Because most of our work isn’t dramatic, “mountain-moving” stuff.

It’s the small stones: the contract clauses, the data clean-ups, the supplier check-ins that never make it into shiny case studies.

In my experience, it’s those small stones that decide whether a transformation succeeds or stalls.

Miss them, and you’ll be stuck with a very expensive half-mountain and a lot of excuses.

And on a more personal note: between toddlers, dogs, newsletters, and the logistics of moving countries, my own life is currently one giant mountain of small stones.

The only way through it is one task at a time (and maybe the occasional glass of Rioja).

So if you’re feeling like the big mountain is too much, remember: progress isn’t the grand gestures. It’s the tiny, unglamorous stones you keep moving.

Because of my imminent move, let me remind you again (in case you didn’t read it earlier!) that I’ll be taking a short break. Instead of seeing you in two weeks, the next issue of The Procurement Blueprint will land in your inbox on Monday 22nd September.

I will speak to you again then, hopefully with fewer stones, and maybe even a view from the other side.

Catch you all in four weeks!

Until next time,

Procurement worth reading.