How to Move from Notes to Strategy in One Afternoon
Become AI First Fast
This is part of the AI Procurement Blueprint series, a practical guide for becoming an AI-first Procurement professional.
In this instalment, I’m breaking down the real workflow I used to move from a scribbled notebook idea to a strategic vendor evaluation and executive-ready recommendation.
The best part, it all happened in an afternoon.
🎓 The Experiment
I started with a simple voice note during a walk.
What if I turned it into something strategic?
Could a stream of consciousness recording become a client-ready summary?
Could I test two messaging research vendors and make a recommendation suitable for the C-suite?
Could I do it without spending hours formatting documents or overengineering prompts?
Spoiler, yes.
🚀 The Stack
Tools Used:
Aqua Voice – For fast voice to text capture
Notion – My second brain, for connecting new ideas to old context
ChatGPT – For all transformation layers (notes to summary to executive brief)
🧠 How I Prompted (Without Prompting)
I didn’t engineer prompts from scratch. Instead, I:
Explained My Goal – Told the AI what I wanted the output to achieve, not just what it was
Layered Context – Added summaries from Notion and included relevant personas
Matched Tone and Format – Specified who the output was for, whether executive, social, or internal
This approach let me stay focused on thinking, rather than fiddling with prompt syntax.
📊 The Real Example, Vendor Evaluation (Anonymised)
I was comparing two suppliers to support our upcoming product launch. One offered a hands-on service layer with AI-enhanced insight reporting. The other offered fast turnaround testing with a pre-vetted respondent panel.
Here’s what I did:
Dropped my call notes with Vendor A, who used a concierge-led model, pricing breakdowns, and initial impressions into ChatGPT.
Added web data and screenshots from Vendor B, who used a panel-led model, for comparison.
Asked for a side-by-side comparison table, a CEO-level summary, and a budget recommendation.
I then layered in real pricing feedback, updated the cost model with live screenshots, and asked ChatGPT to tidy and polish it for a C-suite presentation.
The result, a professional-grade decision document that covered everything from strategy to spend, all completed in just 15 to 20 minutes.
🌟 Why It Matters for Procurement
If you work in Procurement or Vendor Management, you know the pain:
Scattered notes from discovery calls
Vague strategic goals that need aligning quickly
Pressure to move from insight to impact as fast as possible
This stack turns unstructured thinking into structured output. It’s not about replacing your judgement. It’s about speeding up the time it takes to get your thinking into a form others can act on.
💼 What You Can Do Today
Try this workflow on your next vendor call:
Capture a voice note instead of writing typed notes
Paste it into your second brain, whether that's Notion, Obsidian, or another tool you use
Add a prompt to ChatGPT like:
“Here’s my unstructured call summary with a prospective supplier. Can you turn this into a one-page comparison for our executive team, including key benefits, cost, and strategic fit?”
Tweak tone, detail, or structure for your audience
Share it the same day
This is what it means to become an AI-first Procurement professional.
Not by chasing shiny tools, but by using the right AI, at the right moments, to speed up thinking, elevate output, and drive action.
If you liked this, you can read the other articles in the AI Procurement Blueprint series here: