Design Thinking and Procurement
Before I start with the benefits of Design Thinking in the function of Procurement, let us see what Design Thinking is.
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge the assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. At the same time, Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems in a methodical manner.
Design Thinking focuses more on human needs, motivations and goals. It also helps in answering why do users do certain things and how do they do it.
It is an iterative process which includes Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Testing. In the core of it, is the user. In the centre of each of these activities is users’ needs, goals and motivations.
For this article I am focusing only on a part of the “User Research” and “Usability Check”, however there is much more we can take from Design Thinking to Procurement. The user research can be done anywhere in the process, we can do user research to empathise with the user, to define their problem, and to test the prototype, etc and the usability check can be done with samples or in demos we receive from the vendor.
Now that we know what is Design Thinking, let us understand what is Procurement.
What is Procurement?
As per Wikipedia — “Procurement is the process of finding and agreeing to terms, and acquiring goods, services, or work from an external source, often via a tendering or competitive bidding process, or through an invitation.
Procurement generally involves making buying decisions under conditions of scarcity. If sound data is available, it is a good practice to make use of the economic analysis methods such as cost-benefit analysis or cost-utility analysis.”
In simple terms the Procurement function helps users to make buying decision and Design Thinking helps design products/services for users in a human centric way. The important thing in both procurement and design thinking is solving user’s problems.
So now we know that the important thing is to solve the user’s problem, but who are these users? Let’s find out.
1. Who are the Users?
Users for Procurement are the one who has given the request, right? Wrong. Users are the one who is going to use the product/service.
Let me explain e.g., Procurement team has got a request from the Administration team to buy some chairs for the Canteen. Now please think who are the users of those chairs; is it the administration team? or the people who are going to use it, clean it, lift it, place it in proper position every day? If your answer is not the administration team, my friend you are correct.
Users for Design Thinking is the person who is going to use the product/service. See, both are related hence Procurement and Design Thinking are related in terms of understanding the users.
2. Procurement Team and Understanding of Users
Procurement teams are always driven by business objectives, they always look for better and multiple options with an optimal price (just made simple though this is very complex process). They will focus more on the requirements and how to get the latest product with exceptional features. They do a good amount of research on the products/services but many a time they forget the user in the process, who are the key stakeholders, who would be responsible for using the products/services.
I am not saying that everyone ignores the user but there are some who do ignore the users. Further some who do consider the real users do not understand how the users generally behaves. They will simply have a survey or will ask one question after another to the users. Research has found that simply doing a survey or asking questions are not that beneficial in understanding actual user behaviour. Moreover what user say and what they do are two different things.
I interviewed some of my ex-colleagues and friends who are working in the procurement department and have asked them who are their users but obviously I twisted the question to understand the process better. I asked them
Whom do you contact for any queries on the request and how do you verify whether the product/service is indeed going to be helpful for them?
Answer they all gave — we ask the requestor for any query and we cross check with the requestor how the product/service is going to be useful to them. To my amaze some of the interviewees didn’t even really bother about the real user and the usability of the product. They were passionately talking about Cost–benefit analysis, cost-utility analysis, competitive analysis, etc.
Furthermore, when I specifically ask them about the consideration of users who are going to use the product/service in their workflow, almost all of the interviewees said that they do ask the real users about the usage of the product. So I countered them by asking how do they do it?
They said “We call them up to meet us and we ask the needs and usage of the product/service”. Some said “We go to their place/workstation and ask the needs and usage of the product/service.
Well, they all fell in a trap which Jakob Nielsen always warned against, “Don’t trust what the user says, trust what they do”
Let see what happened in one of the research Sony did.
Sony was planning to launch a portable speaker and to find out which colours to go ahead with, they called up 20 potential buyers and ask them to come for a small interview, in exchange Sony offered them gift cards.
Sony created 2 version of prototype speakers one in yellow and another in black. The researcher asked all the potential buyers which one would they prefer to buy. All of them said Yellow, and they gave an amazing justification, “Yellow is the colour of Happiness, Yellow is Positive, etc. etc.
Once the interview is done, all the interviewees were told to go the next room where they will get their gift cards. Sony arranged for some more prototype speakers so that they can gift those to the interviewee along with the gift cards. Amazingly everyone now picked the black speakers for themselves. So what a user says is not necessarily what they do.
Therefore, it is very important to observe their behaviours, see them working, observe what are the difficulties they are facing with, challenges on the ground etc. We can find out more about users and their problems by doing a user research.
3. What is user research and how is this beneficial for Procurement Team?
User research focuses on understanding user behaviours, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.
User Research uses tools such as Interviews, Focus group, Ethnography, etc. to help build the empathy with the user as well as to understand the user’s needs, motivations and goals. Using the same technique in Procurement we can understand our users.
To better understand the request of the user, we will need to understand the user first. When you understand the user needs, motivations and goals you will be in better position to help solve their problem.
For example in the case of chairs for canteen we can set up interviews / ethnography with the canteen staffs, the customer to understand their needs for chairs. Chairs should be light to carry or move says the canteen staff, chairs should be easy to sit on says the customer, chairs should be easy on budget says the canteen owner.
When you have all this observations handy with you as a procurement it will be much easier and effective to buy good things for your users.
Please Note: It is not that easy to interview and get the answers from the users, what they say and what they do is totally different, remember what Jakob Nielsen said “Don’t trust what the user says, trust what they do”. I suggest that the Procurement team should start practicing User Research and start learning to empathise with the user or if it is big team, good to have a UX Researcher. UX Researcher have the tools and technique to do user research and usability test in a best possible way.
4. Usability Check and Procurement Team
Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/service to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily.
As a general practice every procurement team ask for samples or demo of the products/services they are going to procure, so that they can check how things work and to find out if it fulfils the requirement of the requestor.
Generally the real user are not part of these samples or demo meetings, they are substituted with the representatives who are well positioned in that department. Now let us say that there is a request to buy some technological product and the user of these product aren’t tech-savvy. In these type of meetings we have the procurement, the vendor and the representative of the user. All these people generally are tech-savvy, they know how technological things works. After couple of meeting with different vendors the Procurement team and the representative comes to conclusion which product is easy to use and is available at a competitive price.
Now, things which seems easy and straight forward to tech-savvy Procurement team and the representative might not be easy for the users, as the user doesn’t know how technological products work, they can’t build the same conceptual/mental models of the product as the Procurement team and the representative can. The understanding of technology differs between the user, the Procurement team and the representative. Hence it is wise to bring the real user in the demos rather than the representatives. Together with the user we should ask the below questions to find out its usability.
a. Is the product/service is conforming to what the user wanted?
b. Is the product/service easy to use?
c. Is the product/service easy to achieve the goals that have been set?
d. Is the product/service easy to remember to do the same task again?
e. Is the product/service is error tolerance, and if error happens does it provide a self-sufficient instructions to recover from the error?
f. Is the product/service engaging, where people can happily do their tasks?
These are some common questions to ask, we may also have some other usability questions which depends upon the product/service. Usability Heuristic Evaluation is helpful while checking usability.
5. Business Benefits:
Well, now we have come to an important point, how doing user research is helpful for business.
a. It helps in buying the right thing.
Many a time a user wanted something but the requestor requested for something else and as the user was not involved in the process nor were they part of key meetings sadly, they only come to know about the useless product when it is delivered to them.
In this case either the user will use the product with lots of pain which will drastically reduce the efficiency and productivity of the user, or they need to return the product and some companies have return policies where they charge for returning it back. Either way business will suffer the loss, hence we should make sure that we understand the user and buy things they need for their functions.
b. User Research help save time and money
Many-a-time, procurement gets a straight forward request (some call it vanilla request) to procure a specific products/services. Now I agree the Procurement team will do a research to find optimal alternatives but the tools and techniques to do the research might not be user centric. Here if we use Design Thinking way of user research we can better understand the user goals, pains points and motivations. If we do so we can easily find out the actual requirement.
For example a department has requested to procure Microsoft Excel. Now post user research we came to know that the said department needs Microsoft Excel just to do data entry with simple columns and rows, they are not going to use it for complex pivot table, charts and other advance options of Microsoft Excel. In this case we can simple tell them to use OpenOffice Spreadsheet software which is a free version and almost do all that Microsoft Excel can do. This is just a simple example to elaborate my point. Doing so we can save time, money and will free us from all the hassles of negotiations, vendors meeting, etc.
c. Usability check ensures that we buy things which are usable and useful
Doing a usability check before buying the product/service helps understand whether it is useful and easy to use. If the products/services is effective and efficient it helps maximise the productivity of the users.
d. Usability check help reduce cost on Help Desk
Big companies have their own IT help desk to help their employees. This help desk gets inundated with calls in regards to errors with the software/hardware. If the product is easy to use, easy to learn and are error prone or gives good error recovery message there will be huge drop in calls at the Help Desk.
Conclusion: Benefits of user research and usability check in Procurement Function is not limited of what I mentioned above, there many more benefits. To avail the benefits it is of prime importance to keep the user in the centre of the workflow or the process of procurement. Products/services procured keeping in mind the user’s goals, pain points, motivations makes the user happy/satisfied and will definitely increase the productivity, efficiency as well as the usability of products/services.
It is a huge topic to write an article on, but I have tried my best to keep it simple and straight (KISS), I also haven’t explained the best methods of conducting the user research and usability check but would love to write about it only if the readers are interested, do mail me or tweet if you are interested. Hope you like the article, feedbacks are always welcomed here bikash.joshi@live.com Twitter @Bikash_Designer
