The Purchase Function will DIE.

Every profession which is recognized after the world War II will die its death in near future, a series of WatsApp university once circulated that some online consultation will over shadow and eliminate the legal advisers role, which cannot be ruled out completely, who ever imagined that the WALKMAN? of Sony will come to an end in near future. Where in the 80s the western world could not breath without the existence of the Walkman? , till the invention of the I POD, the death of the Walkman ? was inevitable and it ended in 2010, similarly there are functions which are here to stay for a while but will die its natural death, and one of them is the Purchase function. Which in near future will come to an end.

One morning my national head sales called me and said that he have send an inquiry to one of our esteemed suppliers on my behalf, and asked if it was okay with me. I did not have second thought, as far as the work is done I had no problem with that. Somewhere in my subconscious the thought lingered that what if the whole purchase department is abolished and there is a linking between our sales with the sellers sales ! will it solve the whole purpose.

I once was hearing an interview of our incumbent Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi on a TV Channel, that time he was the Chief Minister of Gujarat, said about the external affairs ministry function. He said the external affairs ministry now a days is only trade and nothing else, unlike erstwhile it happened to be like RAW KGB, spying and all stuff. The purpose of the mention of this story is, things change, and have to change.

Once the thought struck me, I extensively searched the internet and found that I was not the only and one who was thinking in the direction. An Harward Business Review published an article in the month of June 2081, titled as The Death of supply chain management. https://hbr.org/2018/06/the-death-of-supply-chain-management,

The Author trio say that the death of supply chain management as we know it is on the horizon. The managers and companies working to update their skills and processes today are the ones who will come out on top, rest you can read the article for yourself.

What made the researchers do the research in that direction? One of them Allan Lyall is a supply chain and retail expert. He was Amazon’s VP of European operations for over 12 years, and has held other executive roles at Apple and Tesco. Allan must have closely watched or rather monitored the process of purchasing whilst in Amazon, however this may not apply immediately to the industry buying, but it has to happen, with online trading such as online bidding in place, the buying process will require less and less human intervention.

What will happen to Negotiating skills, frankly there is no such skills, the negotiating only involves around two persons with some weaknesses and some strengths, it’s a contract or an agreement, and it entirely depends upon who over smarts who ?. The buyer or the seller .  

So those who are trying to have their career in Purchasing now should give it a second thought.