Having had the misfortune of navigating a particularly ineffective large corporate purchasing machine, this resonates.

Nobody in the chain is interested in outcomes, they’re interested in completed process.

The value of something to the business is totally uninteresting to a purchasing person. They care about contractual arrangements, compliance with all sorts of poorly thought out ethics agreements, and making sure that all the process has been followed.

The result is far more money spent for far less outcome than if we’d just got a credit card and bought something. There’s a whole ecosystem of companies which are terrible at actually solving problems, but know exactly how to meet all the requirements of a large corporate purchasing department.

It’s depressing.