Welcome back to The Procuretech Podcast!

We're continuing with our mini series where we ask influencers and industry experts for their thoughts and nuggets of advice on everything that's happening in the digital procurement world.

This episode we're talking about agility, and we're joined by an expert on all things agile procurement: President of the Lean Agile Procurement Association, Mirko Kleiner.

 
Agile Procurement: Fantasy or Attainable? - Mirko Kleiner from LAP Alliance
I first heard of Mirko back in 2016, when I saw him asking on his website why procurement can't be more fun, lean and agile. I'm a huge fan of this kind of thinking. 

Our talk today should prove that agility isn't just something for startups in the tech industry.

But before we get into that, let's have a quick recap on Mirko's journey so far.

 
Mirko Kleiner – A brief background
Mirko's actually not a procurement professional. His roots are in the supplier side, which led to some big tenders from a software supplier back in the early 2000s.

He noticed a problem. Customers didn't know what they really wanted, and expected a fixed price fixed scope contract. So back in summer 2018, Mirko got inspired by the fact that there was no solution for handling this kind of uncertainty.

And so he decided to reinvent the wheel and start on page one. If procurement didn't exist Right? How would we design that from scratch? That was the starting hypothesis.

Because of his software background, he was used to having just one day to close the deal, sign the contract and start collaboration and delivery the next day. That was his starting point.

And out of this crazy idea, a whole new movement and a whole new approach evolved.

 
The evolution of Agile Procurement
The first step was bringing together the right people.

Then they asked, what are the expected outcomes? A lot of customers seemed to struggle internally over expectations at the very high level.

Something magic happened when they realised they needed to bring in suppliers.

Instead of sending around documents as we used to do in the past, the idea was to invite suppliers into the discussion at the ground floor. To have them simultaneously in the same room - physically, or virtually - to co create the solution.

This can close the deal within hours, or days, depending on the complexity of the case.

And this doesn't just apply to software procurement. It extends to buying raw materials or professional services. The approach could apply to any category, direct and indirect.

It's not a silver bullet - if you have a commodity, something that you could buy off the shelf, or a finished product, then you're better using a reverse auction or an RFP.

But if you have a level of uncertainty, innovation, or it's very organisational complexity, sometimes it's even a complexity, an organisational complexity, you should choose a more agile approach.

Agile is is a great way to be able to work with suppliers and understand what they bring to the table in terms of innovation on...