I recently caught this terrific post from Sören Petsch on LinkedIn entitled “Email is Killing Your Procurement Process.” It’s from his substack, Zen & the Art of Procurement Automation, which is all about using technology to improve procurement practices in organizations.
How email is killing the procurement process
In his article, Sören outlines many of the issues email creates in procurement, especially when engaging in external collaboration with suppliers and vendors. He echoes the struggles we’ve observed in other organizations, industries, and functions. Perhaps the only “good news” here is that email seems universally painful for everyone negotiating with external stakeholders.
While the entire article is worth reading, there were a couple of things I thought were worth highlighting:
Email impacts employee burnout
Sören connects how email’s negative impact on productivity affects employee retention, writing,
“The cumulative effect of these inefficiencies is employee burnout.”
It is heartening to see leaders recognize the role inadequate tooling has on employee satisfaction retention. We believe that most employees want to be productive if they can, but frequently, some of the tools we’ve imposed drive them towards performative work and reduced productivity.
Email lacks visibility and accountability
Also noteworthy were his comments on the lack of visibility and accountability,
“Accountability suffers when responsibilities aren't clearly defined, or team members can't easily see who handles what.”
While this has clear implications for internal team dynamics, this also applies to the counterparties you’re collaborating with. We’ve heard from many in the field that a key part of the procurement puzzle is building strong, arm’s length relationships with vendors and suppliers—it’s often what separates your Tier I, II, and III. Being transparent throughout the entire process helps build trust because the other team understands who’s accountable or “who handles what” and has clarity on the process. In addition, we think this level of visibility needs to extend over the entire collaboration. It’s one of the reasons we developed our ‘recap’ feature, which provides both teams—you and your vendor—a tip-to-tail view of the entire collaboration helping keep everyone abreast of all the twists and turns in the process.
Email creates data silos
Finally, Sören wrote about how email creates data silos within the organization.
“Valuable data gets trapped in inboxes, making performing analytics or gaining insights difficult.”
We want to add that much of that “Valuable data” is also a prime target for cybercriminals. Email inboxes have become especially tempting because they’ve become data graveyards—repositories of sensitive information that can fuel sophisticated cyberattacks like business email compromise (BEC) and vendor email compromise (VEC), impacting you and your suppliers.
It’s a big reason why external collaborations should take place in platforms that provide strong compartmentalization and data lifecycle management features, such as ephemeral storage, that mitigate these risks. Plus, these kinds of platforms also help maintain compliance with security and privacy policies and regulations, creating a safer environment for everyone.
Advice on overcoming email’s challenges
In the following sections, Sören discusses the critical capabilities for solutions that can overcome email’s limitations. While his recommendations primarily focus on internal procurement process improvement, these requirements are also highly relevant to solutions supporting external collaborations or the shared workflows between the procurement teams and their suppliers. For example when executing critical tasks like negotiating contracts and payment terms, issuing RFIs/RFPs, performing risk assessments, and more.
Like internal workflows, these shared workflows (or external collaboration) benefit from having one place to go for both teams to access relevant information, updates, and documents. This shared space helps keep everyone on the same page reducing delays and miscommunication. In TakeTurns, this role is fulfilled by the TakeTurns Flow™ it keeps all the documents and files (and their versions), communications, and stakeholders in one place helping keep both parties aligned.
Transparency is essential for building trust in external relationships. Both parties need visibility into responsibilities, progress, and next steps to maintain accountability and strengthen trust. TakeTurns addresses this need by providing full visibility for both parties, allowing them to track the progress of all deals without constant status updates—and even see what happened (i.e., Recap).
Ready to Overcome Email’s Challenges? Try TakeTurns
As Sören’s article points out, email-based workflows fall short in today’s complex procurement landscape, impacting efficiency, accountability, and security. If these challenges resonate, it may be time to explore a solution to support internal and external collaboration. TakeTurns provides centralized communication, enhanced visibility, and robust security for all your procurement needs.
Experience the difference that TakeTurns can make for your team’s productivity, transparency, and supplier relationship-building. Discover a better way to collaborate—try TakeTurns today.
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