I'm sitting at my desk in my home office working on my PurchaseRealm blog entries when suddenly I hear a loud noise outside. It sounds like some kind breaking or scraping on the street. (In my mind, I'm picturing Tom Cruise running from those alien things erupting from the cement in War of the Worlds, but that's just my screenwriter's imagination...I hope!)
So I tear myself away from my Know More Media related typing to look out the window. What do I see?
A tree, or a very large portion of one, from the property next door just fell over and is blocking the street!
One police car, one city public works truck, and one large bulldozer later, the tree is now out of the street and completely resting on the lawn, waiting to give some business owner a big surprise when or she arrives at work tomorrow (actually later this) morning. [It's almost 2 AM here as I'm typing this.]
How am I going to make this all relate to Purchasing? The falling tree is a great example of the unexpected - which can occur in any job, and Purchasing is no exception.
Buyers must react to the current situation and re-prioritize based on new information. Right now, I would hate to be a Buyer at a company that is in any way directly affected by gas prices. All the indirect ways are bad enough. The ramifications of these price fluctuations will undoubtedly be felt throughout Purchasing Departments. (See this post for some opinions on gas prices. See this post for some predicitions.) Prices were falling somewhat recently and now we've had a sudden spike again. Imagine the havoc that will wreak on a buyer's savings or spend projections.
Buyers face the unexpected on the job in other ways as well. I had once just finished a Sourcing exercise when one of the companies (thankfully, not the one that won the bid) suddenly went bankrupt and closed immediately. After the fact, some people in the industry said they saw it coming, but it was a shock to many. Imagine if we had chosen them as our new company during the bidding process! It would have been back to scouring the RFP's pretty quickly.
Those are only two of the countless unexpected possibilities that each day in the Purchasing Department brings. Get ready for anything. If you hear rumbling cement and see Tom Cruise running down the street...don't say I didn't warn you!
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