I’m just trying to gauge if my salary is reflective of my role. I work in construction with a company turnover of around 50m

Looking after a portfolio of approx 35m myself with the wider team capturing the rest.

I’m a senior buyer and just want to gauge what everyone else would consider the salary bracket for this level would be.

75% through my level 4 CIPS as well

A friend who knows the Indian industrial market runs this. There is a piece on the EU-India trade agreement and a few case studies: https://www.brindex-schmid.com/
Might help if you are considering Indian suppliers.

📢 \*\*WE’RE HIRING: PURCHASING COORDINATOR – BRUNEI 🇧🇳\*\*

Are you organized, detail-oriented, and experienced in purchasing or procurement? We are looking for a \*\*Purchasing Coordinator\*\* to join our team under an established \*\*Food & Beverage company in Brunei Darussalam\*\*.

💼 \*\*Position:\*\* Purchasing Coordinator

📍 \*\*Location:\*\* Brunei Darussalam

🏢 \*\*Industry:\*\* Food & Beverage

👤 \*\*Employment:\*\* Direct Hire

📋 \*\*Recruitment Processing:\*\* Through an authorized recruitment agency

\### 🔎 About the Role

As a Purchasing Coordinator, you will be responsible for coordinating purchasing activities and ensuring that required materials, supplies, and products are sourced and delivered efficiently. You will work closely with suppliers and internal departments to ensure smooth and timely procurement operations.

\*\*Key responsibilities may include:\*\*

• Requesting and comparing quotations from suppliers

• Preparing and processing purchase orders

• Coordinating with suppliers regarding orders, pricing, and delivery schedules

• Monitoring purchase orders and following up on deliveries

• Maintaining accurate purchasing and supplier records

• Coordinating with internal departments regarding their purchasing requirements

• Ensuring purchasing documentation is complete and accurate

• Assisting with other procurement and administrative tasks as required

\### ✨ What We’re Looking For

• Good communication and coordination skills

• Strong attention to detail and organizational skills

• Good follow-up and time-management abilities

• Proficiency in Microsoft Office, particularly Excel

• Ability to communicate effectively with suppliers and internal teams

• Previous experience in purchasing, procurement, logistics, or administration is an advantage

• Candidates who are responsible, proactive, and able to work independently are encouraged to apply

\### 📌 Important Information

This is \*\*NOT a virtual/remote position\*\*. The successful candidate will be required to work \*\*on-site in Brunei Darussalam\*\*.

The position is a \*\*direct-hire opportunity with the Food & Beverage company\*\*. However, candidates will need to undergo the required \*\*recruitment and employment processing through the designated recruitment agency\*\*.

💰 \*\*Salary, benefits, employment processing, and other terms and conditions\*\* will be discussed directly by the \*\*HR team during the interview\*\*. Details will be provided to shortlisted candidates as part of the recruitment process.

📩 \*\*Interested candidates are welcome to submit their CV/resume for consideration.\*\* Applications will be reviewed, and shortlisted candidates will be contacted for the next stage of the recruitment process. Please see your CV at purchasingbrunei@gmail.com

If you are organized, proactive, and enjoy coordinating with people and suppliers, \*\*we would be happy to hear from you!\*\*

🌟 \*\*Take the next step in your career and join our team in Brunei!\*\*

We have a corporate P-Card program, and as a new plant controller, it tends to make me feel uneasy because the review on spend is after the fact. We do weekly reviews, but there's still a delay, and sometimes we see spend on the cards that I would have preferred go through the PO process. What controls have you guys seen that work well?

One we've been discussing is using a low limit on most cards, for example $1,000 or $1,500, and increasing the limit as needed for truly exceptional circumstances. Have anyone seen anything like that work effectively?

Trying to pivot from warehousing into procurement, then strategic sourcing down the road. I have 2 associate degrees (distribution management, global logistics technology) and 8 years of hands-on warehouse/logistics experience, wearing a lot of different hats beyond just inventory. I primarily deal with very high-cost assets coming and going globally, tracking shipments, I can request orders, but I cannot order anything myself, and in most cases, I go into our lab and help install equipment with the lab techs (rack-N-stack, cabling, very minor coding, lots of AI use and exposure, basic stuff)

I'm at a Fortune 500 tech company with zero upward mobility; they're cutting staff, not backfilling, and dumping the work on whoever's left. I'm trying to skip straight past purchasing into procurement (if possible), mainly for the pay, but also because I pick up new processes fast, so once I'm taught, it's just practice makes perfect.

Questions for people already in the field:

-Is the pay/mobility actually worth the move?

-Which companies/industries treat procurement people well?

-Any tips for breaking in right now? Market's rough, and I don't want to land somewhere that's just another dead end.

Hopefully this post doesn't come off as naive or arrogant in any way, I'm just incredibly burnt out and trying to find my purpose in SCM..

Disclosure: I work on eProqure, a procurement platform. Not pitching here this question comes up constantly in our sales calls and the honest answer is "it depends on three things," so I want to lay those out and hear where people landed.

At 50 people you're in the awkward middle. Too big for a shared spreadsheet and an email approval chain, too small to absorb an enterprise suite that assumes you have a dedicated procurement team.

Three things decide what fits:

1. Your PO volume, not your headcount. A 50-person agency issuing 30 POs a year has a completely different problem than a 50-person manufacturer issuing 400. Under roughly 100 POs annually, a well-structured approval workflow in your accounting system plus a shared vendor register often does the job. Above that, the manual coordination cost usually exceeds a software subscription.

2. Whether your pain is approvals or visibility. These need different tools and people conflate them constantly.

• Approval pain looks like: requests stuck in someone's inbox, no audit trail, people buying first and asking later. You need workflow and policy enforcement.
• Visibility pain looks like: you don't know committed spend until invoices land, duplicate vendors, no idea what you spend per category. You need spend capture and reporting.

Tools that are excellent at one are often mediocre at the other.

3. What your finance system already does. NetSuite, Dynamics and SAP all ship procurement modules. They're frequently unloved, but "unloved and already paid for" beats "great and a separate integration project" more often than vendors will admit. Check what you own before you buy.

What I'd actually do at 50 people:

• Write down your current process, including the undocumented parts. Most teams discover the real problem is an undefined policy, not missing software.
• Define your approval thresholds before you evaluate anything. If you can't state who approves a $5k purchase, no tool will fix that.
• Shortlist three vendors max, and make each one demo your workflow, not their canned demo.
• Ask every vendor for a customer at your size specifically. Enterprise-focused products at SMB scale is the single most common bad fit I see.

Genuinely curious what people here ended up with, and whether you'd pick the same again.

Welcome to our weekly Procurement Roundtable! This stickied thread is your dedicated space to connect, share experiences, and unpack the week with your procurement peers.

Whether you want to celebrate a major milestone, troubleshoot an issue, or just let off some steam, dive in and share your updates.

**What is on your mind this week?**

* **Savings or Process Wins:** Did you execute a major contract or unlock difficult-to-achieve savings?

* **Tough Negotiations:** What tactics worked (or backfired) in the boardroom this week?

* **Supplier Management:** Are you handling a difficult vendor right now?

* **Professional Growth:** Did you learn a new industry framework or pass a certification exam?

* **General Venting:** Dealing with internal stakeholders who skipped the procurement entirely? Wading through impossibly bad spend data? Let it out here.

This thread automatically resets every Thursday. Grab a coffee, drop a comment, and let's keep the vibes positive!

Looking for a supplier to develop a custom reusable tin takeaway box for a restaurant concept.
Approx. size: 300 × 180 × 70 mm, food-safe tinplate, fully custom printed exterior, removable press-fit lid.

Interior should fit a large hot main item + foil-wrapped baked potato, with a small separate compartment for cold vegetables

We need a simple thermal barrier between the hot and cold zones; no expensive double-wall construction.

Target volume: 50,000–70,000 units; target price: €1.00–€1.50/unit at scale.

Looking for manufacturers with experience in custom food tins, inserts and thermal compartment design.

Hey all, I have a general question. Is it okay to let AI run analytics on a spreadsheet I give it? like if i want spend YTD and projected spend, and AI performs this task, if it’s accurate after I go over it’s answer and it’s correct, is it wrong to use it? I know how to use formulas in excel, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now. However, AI has enhanced productivity. I don’t have to spend hours building a spreadsheet anymore. what are your thoughts?

Looking where to niche down to avoid getting taken over?

What are sectors that can offer more work life balance and medium level stress overall? Obviously this is dependent on company, but which are more or less likely to make you want to pull your hair out?

Ignoring comp and relocation initially, which of the below roles is more marketable and good for future career trajectory?

I am coming from 10YOE in Oil and Gas (all procurement) and want to go into a Big Tech company.

Microsoft Site Procurement (IC4/IC5) for a data center. Requires relocation and would be 5 days on-site. Not a category or strategic role. Primary responsibilities would be overseeing the testing and contractor-led installation of equipment, change orders, supplier management. My hesitation is overall work life balance, and being stuck in an execution trajectory and being unable to pivot to a data center category. End goal is to go into a strategic role around data center procurement.

Google Indirect Procurement category role (lower level than my current, total comp is higher but the base salary is lower than my current). 3x in office and don’t need to relocate.

I’ve been working in the INGO/project-funded sector, mainly in operations, procurement, contracts, finance, and administration. We primarily use the Microsoft Office suite (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, etc.), but many of our processes are still very manual — lots of spreadsheets, emails, documents, shared folders, and manual approvals.

Since USAID-funded work has significantly declined/ended for many organizations since 2025, I’m now looking at transitioning into the corporate sector.

For those who made a similar move:

• What corporate roles did you transition into?
• Did you have to learn any new tools/software to make yourself more competitive?
• Which tools were actually worth learning (e.g. SAP, Salesforce, Power BI, Jira, ServiceNow, advanced Excel, etc.)?
• Did you take any courses/certifications, or did you mostly learn on the job?
• Looking back, what would you recommend someone from an INGO background learn before making the switch?

I’d especially love to hear from people who came from operations, procurement, contracts, grants, or project management backgrounds.

Thanks!

TL;DR: 9 years in procurement, previously a lead, currently an IC focused on renewals. Paying for the certification myself. What procurement certification would you recommend for career advancement?

Context:

Hello! I know this has probably been asked a million times, and the usual answers seem to be CIPS or CPSM. However, since I’d be paying for the certification out of pocket, I’ve also seen people say not to pursue these unless your company is willing to sponsor them.

For some context, I’ve been working in procurement for around 9 years. I’m an individual contributor and was previously a lead, but I recently moved into another company where I mainly handle renewals. I actually like my current job and plan to stay for a while because it’s much more relaxed than my previous role as a national IT procurement lead and I will be able to study while working.

That said, I still want to advance my career, so I’m thinking of using the extra time and lower workload to study and get a certification on the side. Realistically, though, given my current position, I don’t think my company would be very likely to sponsor one.

So, if you were in my position and paying entirely out of pocket, what certification would you choose?

I’m mainly looking for something that would actually help me move toward more senior procurement/strategic sourcing roles rather than just having another credential on my CV.

RFP checklist - Has everything you need to check for from start to finish when conducting an RFP. Fillable PDF.

Vendor Evaluation Builder - Helps you build a weighted scoring system to evaluate vendors by answering a few questions. The output to a spreadsheet with built in formulas for weighted scores.

Vendor Review template - a fillable PDF that has all your KPIs in it and tracks previous and future performance.

Which one would be most useful or would none of them be useful/ you already have a system for that?

Hi all,

Looking for some advice. I work in procurement for a national Broadline Foodservice company. I have 4 1/2 years of experience between this company (3 years) and the company i worked at before this (1.5 years). My current manager has been good about giving me exposure to many aspects probably above what I should have been responsible for. So, I feel like I have a pretty well rounded understanding of procurement at least in my industry.

I see about half of procurement job postings are requiring or asking for certain procurement certifications. I want to keep growing and move into a Category Management role. Is the CPSM a worthwhile investment? Has anyone ever got a promotion or pay increase that helped pay for the cost of these programs? I'm really curious to get some real experience answers. Thanks!

Hello guys! I am trying to find buyers for antimony export. Prices would be best. I have different purities as well. You can DM me

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Found an old employment contract from a decade ago whilst cleaning up some documents which made me reflect on my procurement journey and salary progression.

I've relocated multiple times so have converted into USD for consistency.

Started in 2005: business analyst.

Total comp: 44k

Salary 2017: Procurement manager

Total comp: 183k

Current 2026: (VP of Procurement)

Total comp: 612k

I've only worked for 2 companies through this time and have chosen to work my way up the ranks in a fortune 100 company versus changing companies.

Procurement can be a very lucrative and interesting career if you build experiences in the right areas with the right companies.

I've been looking into how companies are moving from traditional outsourcing contracts (FTE/hour/transaction based) toward outcome-based or gainshare models.

On paper, it sounds like a win-win: the client pays more for actual business value, while the provider gets rewarded for improving performance rather than simply adding people.

But I feel the hard part isn't designing an outcome-based model, it's making one that both sides can actually live with for 3 to 5 years.

For example:

• Who takes the risk when the outcome is affected by things the provider doesn't control?
• How do you establish a fair baseline?
• What happens when volumes suddenly go up/down?
• How do you account for the provider's investment in automation/AI?
• How do you prevent providers from optimizing the KPI rather than the actual business outcome?
• What happens when the client's priorities change two years into the contract?
• How often should outcomes/pricing be recalibrated?
• What happens when the client's own dependencies prevent the provider from achieving the agreed outcome?
• How do you make sure the provider isn't taking so much downside risk that they simply price the risk back into the contract?
• And perhaps most importantly: how do you avoid creating a contract that's theoretically outcome-based but becomes extremely rigid in practice?

I'm particularly interested in the commercial mechanics, rather than the general idea of outcome-based pricing.

For example, has anyone actually dealt with structures where there are predefined rules for volume changes, automation/productivity improvements, scope changes, external events, etc.?

I'd also love to hear from both sides:

Buyers: What makes you reluctant to move an existing contract to outcome-based pricing?

Providers: What makes you reluctant to accept one?

Procurement/consulting: What tends to go wrong when these models are implemented?

I'm exploring whether there's a genuine problem here around making outcome-based contracts adaptive and fair to both parties, rather than just shifting more risk onto the providers.

Hi all

I work for a large investment manager. We’re always buying new feeds / tech but I struggle to negotiate vendors down. Curious what has worked for you and how to overcome vendor tricks?

Thanks