Role
Category buyer
How do you know what you really spend a year in your category? If it has to be assembled from several companies, systems and cost accounts, you go into negotiations with an approximate number - while the supplier knows theirs exactly.
Intro call
Four questions we would start with
How do you know what you spend in the category over a year?
That is the first number every negotiation starts from - and the only one the supplier has more precisely than you, because they see all of their sales to your group.
What do you not know about your suppliers until something happens?
Usually: how many of them there really are in the category, which of them overlap and where you depend on a single source. That surfaces at a breakdown, not at a review.
What stays in the company when a category buyer leaves?
The contracts stay. Knowledge of the supplier market, of who will move on what and where the limits are, leaves - and the successor rebuilds it over two years.
Which negotiating argument repeats most often?
If the team cannot answer, then every negotiation starts from zero instead of drawing on what worked before.
We take over assembling the picture, you keep the negotiation
Collecting the spend in the category, watching the supplier market and preparing the negotiation material can be taken off the desk. The negotiation itself and the category strategy stay with the buyer.
- The picture of the category is assembled from your own data. - Spend from every company and system, with no estimates. That is the number whose absence weakens your position most.
- We do not negotiate for you. - The system prepares the material - price history, the structure of the spend, alternative suppliers. The conversation with the supplier stays a conversation between people.
- What was agreed stays in the company. - What worked, what the supplier would not move on, what the limits were. At the next negotiation you do not start from a blank page.
Scope
What can be taken off category management
Nineteen example tasks. Each one has a human approval point. Below is a selection, and the scope we fit to your process.
The picture of spend in the category
- Collecting the category spend from every company and system
- The structure of the spend by supplier, item and ordering unit
- Pointing out the same thing bought at different prices
- Detecting spend outside the framework agreements
- How the spend changed over time with what affected it (assessment: the buyer)
The supplier base
- A register of the category's suppliers with scope and history
- Pointing out areas with a single supplier - material for a risk assessment
- Monitoring the situation of suppliers important to the category
- A summary of suppliers duplicating the same scope
- A list of potential alternatives (assessment of their usefulness: the buyer)
Preparing a negotiation
- Negotiation material: volume, price history, current and market terms
- How the prices of items changed over time
- Pointing out the items with the largest effect on the outcome
- Variant scenarios for different volume levels (choice: the buyer)
- A reminder about contract dates and negotiation windows
Strategy and review
- A register of what was agreed in negotiations - what worked, what did not
- Checking whether the negotiated terms are actually applied
- Savings against the previous period
- Material for a category review (conclusions and plan: the buyer)
A day's work
Today
- You assemble the picture of spend before a negotiation, in a spreadsheet, over several days
- You know as many suppliers in the category as you remember
- You go into a meeting with the current price and an impression of what is possible
- You do not know whether the negotiated terms are applied in the orders
- What was agreed at the last negotiation exists in your notes
- You remember a contract date a month beforehand
With AI assistance
- The picture of the category is current at any moment, not only before a negotiation
- You can see every supplier in the category and where they overlap
- You go into the meeting with the price history and the structure of the spend
- Departures from the negotiated terms report themselves
- What was agreed is in a register, available to your successor too
- Negotiation windows remind you in advance
- Negotiating position
you go in with a number the supplier also knows
the category spend is counted, not estimated
- Consolidating the spend
the same thing is not bought in five places at five prices
the fragmentation is visible as a list, not as a hunch
- Knowledge of the supplier market
less dependence on a single source
single-source areas are pointed out before the supplier uses it
- Agreements that carry over
a change of buyer does not set the category back two years
what was agreed and the limits are recorded
We start with one category, ideally one with a negotiation coming up.
- Step 1
We assemble the spend
All the spend in the category, from every company and system. This is the hardest and the most valuable step - the number usually turns out different from what was assumed.
- Step 2
A register of suppliers and overlaps
Who supplies what, where it overlaps, where you have a single source. Material for a decision on consolidation.
- Step 3
Negotiation material
Price history, structure, scenarios. Prepared ahead of a specific negotiation, not in advance of nothing.
- Step 4
Checking the terms are applied
Whether what you negotiated is actually being used. This step usually reveals that some of the savings never reached the orders.
Common questions
Questions that come up at the first meeting
Will negotiations eventually be handed to a system?
No, because a negotiation is a conversation about what is not in the data - about what a supplier can do if asked at the right moment. The system prepares the basis: volumes, price history, what was agreed a year ago. A buyer who does not spend three days assembling that basis holds more conversations, and better prepared ones.
Does this fall under the AI Act?
Category management is not a high-risk use. The point to watch is elsewhere: suppliers' price data is often covered by confidentiality, and exchanging price information between companies has limits under competition law - and those apply whatever the tools.
Still have a question that is not here? Book a call
Next step
What do you spend a year in your largest category - to the last zloty?
We will show you what preparing for a negotiation looks like when the picture of the category is assembled from your own data rather than from estimates.