Technology Procurement Handbook

Technology Procurement Handbook

As society has moved closer to a service economy, so too has procurement moved from compliance to a value-added service. While not strictly a profit center, every dollar a buyer saves goes directly into the company’s pocket. To keep up with today’s fast-moving economy, procurement must go from a search of data, or even applying knowledge already learned, to acquiring wisdom.—from The Technology Procurement Handbook.

What? Okay, this Handbook reads like stereo instructions or the driest textbook ever. But some exciting research is inside—if you can stay awake long enough to get to it.

I am literally the market for this book. I’m the sole Business Systems Analyst in the Purchasing Department of a large US county government. I report directly to the Purchasing Director, who loves new procurement trends. We already have buyers embedded within departments. We outsource some of our activities. However, our IT department has just barely started approving cloud-based databases. Previously, everything was on the premises due to “security concerns” even though that made technology costs much higher.

Our IT is notorious for being too slow to move. They sent out a memo fully one month after the majority of the county’s staff was working from home announcing Cisco WebEx was the County’s choice for online meetings. This was five weeks after I had purchased a Zoom subscription for our department. Other departments were also using Zoom. I had to write a one-page email to my boss on why I selected Zoom (basically user experience). Think of the waste of buying two systems because IT didn’t talk to their departments. Your, and my, tax dollars at work.

The Technology Procurement Handbook contains a brief overview of many systems like the ITIL, PMBOK and Agile. Later in the book, many research results are summarized. Like I said earlier, it has very good information but it’s presented in the most boring way. 3 stars.

Thanks to Kogan Page Ltd. and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

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