Procurement Decision Resources | Digital Advisory

For procurement leaders

Tools, templates and guides for the decisions procurement actually owns: shortlists, proposals, renewals and the dependency that follows signature.

Procurement carries the decisions everyone else feels afterwards. These resources are built for the moments that decide outcomes: scoring a shortlist before it hardens, stress-testing a proposal before the engagement letter, and pricing the dependency that follows signature.

Pressure-test a live decision

When a decision in your function is heading for sign-off, put it to selected senior operators from the Global Board and receive a confidential report before you commit.

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For procurement

Free Decision Tools

Score a specific live decision: readiness, risk and perspective coverage, checked before budget, resources or reputation are committed.

Procurement Risk Calculator

Ten questions that grade a major purchase by the risk it actually carries, from switching difficulty to vendor dependency, and tell you how much independent review it deserves before signature.

Open resource

Consultant Proposal Checklist

Twelve structural checks for a consulting proposal, from named delivery teams to exit criteria, that show whether you are buying a defined engagement or an open-ended relationship.

Open resource

Vendor Concentration Risk Score

Eight questions that measure how much of your operation depends on a single vendor, and how expensive that dependency would be to unwind if you ever had to.

Open resource

All free decision tools

For procurement

Decision Guides

Practical preparation for high-stakes decision moments, from vendor selection and consulting proposals to market entry and M&A.

Before Hiring a Consulting Firm

A decision guide for executives about to sign a consulting engagement letter. It covers the gap between the pitch team and the delivery team, the economics of extensions, and the questions that expose a weak proposal before it becomes a weak engagement.

Open resource

Before Selecting a Vendor

A guide for procurement and business leaders at the final stage of vendor selection, covering the difference between the demo and the configured product, the true shape of total cost, and why scoring models tend to confirm the favourite.

Open resource

Before Choosing a CRM

For commercial and operations leaders selecting or replacing a CRM platform. This guide covers why adoption fails independently of platform quality, the data migration nobody budgets honestly, and why the implementation partner matters more than the logo.

Open resource

Before Outsourcing Operations

For executives evaluating an outsourcing or managed-services deal. This guide covers the baseline games that inflate savings, the knowledge that leaves during transition, the retained organisation nobody designs, and why year three is where these deals are really decided.

Open resource

Before Changing ERP

For executive teams considering an ERP replacement or major upgrade. This guide covers the data migration that always takes longer, the customisation creep that rebuilds the old system, integrator dependency, and the go-live choices that decide how much of the business is at stake at once.

Open resource

Before Hiring an Agency

For marketing and commercial leaders selecting a creative, media or digital agency. This guide covers the pitch-to-delivery gap, scope drift inside retainers, the measurement of media claims, and the ownership questions that only surface when the relationship ends.

Open resource

All decision guides

For procurement

Decision Playbooks

Step-by-step playbooks for major decisions, with each step linked to the tool, template or framework that does the work.

Hiring a Consulting Firm

A step-by-step playbook for hiring a consulting firm: defining the problem before firms shape it, designing a competition they cannot steer, negotiating the team rather than the rate, and deciding the ending in advance.

Open resource

Running a Vendor Selection

A discipline-first playbook for significant vendor selections: gate requirements, anchored scoring, a comparable RFP, priced risk and a negotiation that keeps two finalists live until terms are agreed.

Open resource

All decision playbooks

For procurement

Templates

Copyable decision artefacts (memos, risk registers, scorecards and checklists) ready to use without lead capture.

Vendor Selection Risk Matrix

A copyable matrix for surfacing the delivery, commercial and exit risks in a vendor decision: the ones that only become visible after signature if nobody forces them earlier.

Open resource

Consulting Proposal Review Template

A clause-by-clause review template for consulting proposals, pairing each section with the questions to ask and the warning signs that predict a difficult engagement.

Open resource

Vendor Scorecard Template

A weighted vendor scorecard with criteria, suggested weights, the evidence to score against and scoring guidance, designed to resist the drift that makes scorecards ratify decisions already made.

Open resource

RFP Scoring Sheet

An RFP scoring sheet with criteria, weights fixed before vendors respond, written scoring anchors and a dissent column, built to stop evaluation drifting towards the best-written response.

Open resource

All templates

For procurement

Decision Frameworks

Established frameworks explained through a decision-quality lens: how to apply them, and how they get gamed in practice.

Weighted Scoring Model

A weighted scoring model ranks options by scoring them against weighted criteria. It is the standard tool for vendor selection and the most commonly rigged artefact in procurement, because whoever sets the weights sets the winner.

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All decision frameworks

For procurement

Market Landscapes

Criteria-based orientation for buyers navigating advisory, platform and services categories. No paid rankings, no invented scores.

AI Consulting Firms

An orientation map of the AI consulting market for buyers who need production outcomes, not another pilot. Provider types, evaluation criteria and the failure modes specific to this category.

Open resource

Digital Transformation Consulting Firms

A buyer-side map of the transformation consulting market: who the provider types really are, how their commercial models shape their advice, and what to test before a multi-year commitment.

Open resource

Procurement Advisory Firms

A landscape of the procurement advisory market: the firm types, how fee models shape the savings they find, and what to verify before letting an advisor loose on your supplier base.

Open resource

CRM Implementation Partners

A landscape of CRM implementation partners for buyers who have learned that the platform choice was the easy half: partner types, evaluation criteria and the pricing patterns to negotiate before signature.

Open resource

ERP Consulting Firms

A landscape of the ERP consulting market for buyers facing one of the most consequential vendor decisions an organisation makes: firm types, estimate-optimism risks and the protections to negotiate early.

Open resource

Strategy Consulting Firms

An orientation map of the strategy consulting market: firm types, how leverage models decide who actually works on your problem, and the questions that separate judgement from brand.

Open resource

All market landscapes

For procurement

Comparisons

Concept-level comparisons of the routes open to you: suite vs best-of-breed, in-house vs consulting, build vs buy.

Agency vs Freelancer

A full-service agency and a senior freelancer can both deliver the brief. What separates them is continuity, breadth, accountability and what happens when the work gets difficult.

Open resource

Global Firm vs Boutique

The global firm brings reach, benches and a brand the board recognises; the boutique brings the partner you met and little else in the way of dilution. Both facts cut both ways.

Open resource

All comparisons

For procurement

Decision Patterns

The recurring dynamics underneath difficult decisions: false consensus, split rooms, conflicted experts, stalled calls.

When the Expert Has a Stake

The specialists best placed to advise on a decision are very often paid more if it goes one way. This pattern examines how stake-shaped advice works, why it is rarely dishonest, and how to buy judgement instead of proposals.

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All decision patterns

For procurement

Decision Scenarios

Recognisable executive moments and how to navigate them: a split board, a bold consultancy recommendation, a frozen budget.

CEO Wants to Replace Salesforce

A direct instruction from the top to replace a widely deployed CRM platform puts the CIO between a determined sponsor and a system the business runs on. This scenario maps the tension before anyone drafts an RFP.

Open resource

Procurement Shortlisted Three Vendors

The scoring matrix says the race is open. Everyone in the room knows it is not. This scenario examines what a three-vendor shortlist actually decides, and what it conceals.

Open resource

Consultancy Recommends a Large Transformation

A short diagnostic ends with a polished readout and a recommendation for a multi-year programme, to be led (naturally) by the firm that ran the diagnostic. This scenario unpicks the decision hiding inside that proposal.

Open resource

Vendor Announces a Big Price Increase at Renewal

The increase arrives late, the timeline is short and the vendor has already modelled your dependence. This scenario separates negotiating noise from the real options, including the case for paying.

Open resource

A Key Supplier Was Just Acquired by a Competitor

The announcement promises continuity; the integration will decide otherwise. This scenario covers the change-of-control rights that expire, the data now visible to a rival, and how quickly optionality must be built.

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All decision scenarios

For procurement

Business Calculators

Run the numbers: simple, honest arithmetic for ROI, payback, total vendor cost and risk exposure.

Vendor Total Cost Calculator

Add implementation to the recurring licence and support charges over the life of the contract, and compare vendors on the term cost rather than the headline quote.

Open resource

Consulting ROI Calculator

Compare consulting fees against the benefit the engagement is expected to deliver, and confront the attribution problem that most engagement reviews politely avoid.

Open resource

Consulting Engagement Cost Calculator

Multiplies team size, day rate, weekly days and duration into the full run-rate of a consulting engagement, so the spend is visible before the signature.

Open resource

Price Increase Impact Calculator

Converts a renewal uplift percentage into the additional money paid over the remaining term, so "8% is standard" arrives at the board as a figure rather than a phrase.

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All business calculators

For procurement

Assessment Centre

Score your organisation rather than a single decision: maturity across digital, AI, data, procurement, marketing and the board.

Procurement Maturity Assessment

Eight questions on how your procurement function really operates, from category strategy and supplier visibility to contract governance and whether major awards ever face independent review.

Open resource

All assessment centre

For procurement

Glossary

Decision, procurement and transformation terms defined plainly, including where each concept gets misused in practice.

RFP

A formal invitation asking vendors to propose how they would meet a defined requirement, usually with pricing. The backbone of structured procurement, and a process that measures proposal quality more directly than delivery quality.

Open resource

RFI

An early-stage document used to gather information about vendors and approaches before formal procurement begins. Less binding than an RFP, and more influential than most buyers realise.

Open resource

Vendor Shortlist

The reduced set of vendors taken forward into detailed evaluation. The stage where most of the selection decision is actually made, usually with the least scrutiny.

Open resource

Total Cost of Ownership

The full cost of acquiring, implementing, operating and eventually exiting an asset or system over its life, not just the purchase price. Only as honest as the boundary drawn around it.

Open resource

MSA

A framework contract that fixes the standing legal terms between client and supplier, liability, intellectual property, termination, payment, so individual pieces of work can be agreed quickly underneath it. Negotiated once, lived with for years.

Open resource

Statement of Work

The engagement-specific contract that defines what will be delivered, by whom, by when and for how much, under the umbrella terms of a master agreement. The document every delivery dispute is eventually settled against.

Open resource

All glossary

The decision is yours. The blind spots need not be.

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