Art of Procurement16 Apr 2025

BTW EP 07: Seeking Balance in Buyer-Seller Dynamics with Kate Vitasek

In this seventh episode of the "Buy: The Way…To Purposeful Procurement" podcast series, Art of Procurement's Philip Ideson and Fine Tune CEO Rich Ham take a deep dive into procurement history with Kate Vitasek, Faculty of Graduate and Executive Education at the University of Tennessee, and architect of the groundbreaking Vested methodology.

With over 15 years of research and eight books dedicated to buyer-supplier strategic partnerships, Kate shares her insight into how procurement has traditionally tended to extract value from suppliers through power plays, as opposed to creating value through collaboration and alignment around mutually 'Vested' interests. She traces the historical roots of this dysfunction back to the 1980s with the rise of the Kraljic Matrix and Michael Porter's competitive strategies, both of which further embedded power-based negotiations into procurement's DNA.

Drawing inspiration from the Vested approach, Kate:

Advocates for moving away from transaction-based buyer-seller relationships to outcome-based strategic partnerships where both parties have a genuine vested interest in one another's mutual success, and
Explains this dynamic by sharing examples of organizations that have transformed their supplier relationships by transforming how they measure success, structure contracts, and distribute value across their supplier network.

This episode challenges procurement to recognize when they're spinning their wheels with outdated supplier management tactics and encourages them to reimagine what's possible when buyers and suppliers align their interests toward genuine value creation and purpose-driven procurement.

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