The Overripe Banana-Procurement Corundum

Yes, I'm mixing Bananas and Procurement.

Yo, Procurement Legend, this is a weird one. If you’ve been following my content for a while, you’ll likely no I don’t subscribe to the conventional. And I like to think about things in new ways in the hope of progress. So let’s try this!

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Have you ever thought about how procurement is like a banana?

Seriously, stay with me here. I know it’s weird, but that comes with the nature of you reading content by me… I’m a little odd like this.

Context first. I was listening to a podcast, and I cannot remember which one, but someone who was talking explained a concept using a banana analogy. And I like nothing more than visualising how we can do procurement better than ever.

And my mind dived into this concept, the Overripe Banana-Procurement Conundrum, mainly based on my love of the titles in The Big Bang Theory.

So here goes.

The Rigid, Under-Ripe Banana = Too Rigid Procurement

When a banana is not ripe, it’s hard and rigid.

They taste gross.

No one wants them. You cannot peel them, and if you somehow manage to get the banana out of the skin, the entire process is ruined for you.

Oh man, this gets weirder by the second.

Similarly, when procurement processes are not flexible, they can be challenging to navigate, leading to buyer and supplier frustration.

Not only that, but I’d suggest that, more importantly, a rigid procurement process will destroy confidence in your ability to do your role with your colleagues. And that’s where I want your focus.

Your colleagues don’t want to work with you when you are so rigid and reliant on a tome of policy and processes that you expect your colleagues to memorise, and then wonder why they circumvent you.

Procurement can become too rigid when there are too many rules and regulations that restrict the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.

This could be a horrendous intake process.

A reliance on your colleagues to consume a procurement policy document; otherwise, the spend/policy/procurement police are coming.

Or a lack of insight into where their requests are because no one wants their requests to enter the event horizon…nothing comes back from that.

When does this happen?

This is common in two scenarios:

1 You’re a new procurement team and laying down the law after seeing the mess of the overripe banana where people have had access to credit cards and doing what they want. This is a clean-up phase.

2 You’re an old team in the sense that procurement has existed for aeons in your organisation, and you’re reliant on policy to do a lot of the hard work. In short, you’ve become comfortable with the bureaucracy of procurement.

Perfect Ripeness = Perfect Procurement

When a banana is perfectly ripe, it’s sweet, soft, and easy to eat.

Not too soft, though.

And not too firm.

It’s just right…wait, this is getting weird, but we’ll push on.

Similarly, when procurement processes are flexible and adaptable, they can lead to perfect procurement.

And this is why I’m an advocate of an agile method of procurement, stood up via some guardrails utilising procurement tech that eliminates the reliance on long-winded RFPs and sequential processes.

Perfect procurement means that the right goods and services are delivered at the right time, at the right price, and with the right quality.

Achieving this level of procurement requires a balance between structure and flexibility, where procurement processes are designed to be efficient, effective, and agile enough to adapt to changing circumstances.

A short note on Agile Procurement

Agile procurement is an emerging approach that emphasises flexibility, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

An agile procurement process involves breaking down complex procurement projects into smaller, manageable tasks that can be completed quickly and efficiently.

This allows procurement teams to respond to changing requirements and new information in real time rather than waiting for lengthy approval processes.

It truly requires a different way of thinking about procurement.

The Overripe Banana = Squishy, Breaks, Soggy, Stuff Just Happens

And now, to the gross one and the real risk procurement teams can make when they try to break free of the traditional procurement shackles.

When a banana is overripe, it becomes squishy, breaks easily, and can be soggy.

Similarly, when procurement processes become too flexible, they can lead to overripe procurement.

Overripe procurement means that processes become too loose, and things fall apart.

In short, no one really knows who is doing what or where the accountability lies.

This can result in missed deadlines, poor quality, and even legal issues.

Overripe procurement can occur when processes are not well-defined or when there is a lack of oversight and control.

The crazy part is that you can have a mixture of under and over-ripeness in your processes.

This can happen if you push the agile procurement concept too far.

Or if you’re looking to move away from an under-ripe procurement set-up.

Closing Thoughts

I appreciate this is a bit out there.

But I like to think about procurement through different lenses to improve how we do things. Constant experimentation is a must.

For too long, we’ve been similar to legal relying on precedent.

Before the Enlightenment, it was generally believed that everything important that was knowable had already been discovered and was enshrined in authoritative sources such as ancient writings and traditional assumptions - David Deutsch

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We need to think about procurement differently if we are going to do it better than before.