It’s the festive season- Can procurement help you plan your gifting options?

“As the snow covers the ground and the mood soars high

Rudolph pulls the sledge and Santa goes by

Gifts all around and lots of fun

Only Santa isn’t real and you spend money in tons”

Studies show that an individual spends about 704$ on shopping for Christmas presents. It has been seen that, what the entire America spends in total during Christmas and Halloween, amounts up to a sum, which is greater than the GDP of Sweden. Economically this phenomenon is perhaps not the ideal scenario, because even though through the years the expenditure has been rising, the income has not matched up. This also means, most of the expenditure happens through credit.

Understanding the magnitude of the problem, I have tried to use the principles of procurement to help the gift buying behavior.

This season, when everyone is planning their gifting options. Better planning and knowing what you are going to buy and for whom, is probably the best practice before choosing a gift.

Coming from the procurement domain, one thing that I understand well is how to curb the spend and increase savings.

Let’s see if we can use some of compliance from the procurement subject and plan this month’s gift shopping. However, before reaching for the compliance, let’s see what procurement actually does. Procurement is the overarching function that describes the activities and the processes to acquire goods and services. It looks at the fundamental requirement, sourcing activities like market research, vendor evaluation and negotiation to contract.

Here we are going to apply the procurement methods to acquire the right gift and minimize spend.

Below are the 4 steps that will help you buy your pocket efficient gift:

Step 1: Budgeting (knowing the amount that you want to spend): Chalk out a plan before you choose to go gift shopping. Do not leave home before you have finalized a “Budget”. Once the budget is set you need to think about the perfect gift that will fit your budget.

Step 2: Market Research: Your budget is set and you have thought about the gift, the next obvious step is to find the vendor you are going to buy it from. Make a list of vendors and carefully evaluate each of them.

Step 3: Vendor Evaluation: Set an evaluation criteria — best price, best quality, best service delivery time etc. You can use the help of numerous price comparison websites for the same. Make sure you evaluate at least 5 vendors before closing the deal on one.

Step 4: Purchasing: Once you have evaluated all the options, find the perfect vendor and place your order.

Step 5: Maintaining the vendor record: Keep a note of the contact details and other information about the vendor. So that if needed you can place a complain or you if you choose to use him in future.

Hope these steps help you, with your Christmas shopping. Wish you a happy holiday season!