Other departments have the luxury of focusing only on maximising the benefits on one or two factors (for example engineering specifications, quality, delivery time) and may take a more straightforward approach. But when a final Procurement decision must be taken, even small changes in the parameter weighting factors may produce significantly different results.

The Purchasing professional must take a decision considering all aspects and opinions and may sometimes propose even totally new approaches to each problem. Perhaps sometimes Procurement is seeing things nobody else does...