Why Procurement Shouldn't Be Just About the Money
Challenging the Spend Threshold Mentality and Redefining Value in Modern Procurement
Let me say it plainly: tying procurement involvement to a dollar threshold is lazy, short-sighted, and - ironically - expensive.
Michael Shields' viral LinkedIn post struck a nerve across the procurement community. His core argument? That limiting procurement's role to deals over $50K is not only outdated, but it perpetuates the very perception many of us are working hard to change: that procurement is just about cost control.
That post ignited a firestorm of agreement, disagreement, anecdotes, and ideas in the comments—so much so that it's worth documenting as a broader reflection on where procurement is headed and what still holds it back.
The $5 Ribbon That Shut Down a Truck Plant
Let’s start with Jill Button’s real-life story. She recalled how, back in the 90s, a missing $5 OCR ribbon risked shutting down a GM truck assembly line. A seemingly minor purchase, sure, but the operational cost of a halted production line? Hundreds of thousands of dollars per hour.
It perfectly illustrates Shields’ point: low-dollar doesn't equal low-risk. A procurement function that only pays attention to "big" deals misses the landmines in the weeds.
Procurement is (Still) Fighting for Relevance
If you're only brought in for big-ticket items, you remain the department of "no" and "cost savings."
Aiman Nadeem nailed it: limiting involvement reduces procurement to a transactional player. You're not seen as a partner. You're seen as an obstacle that shows up late in the process to poke holes or slash budgets.
And as Skye Walker pointed out, this threshold model makes it too easy for stakeholders to bypass procurement altogether. Sometimes you’re an advisor, sometimes a collaborator, sometimes completely out of the loop. That inconsistency erodes trust.
So What’s the Alternative?
Many commenters converged on one idea: create a smarter, more nuanced framework for procurement involvement. Think:
Risk
Complexity
Strategic value
Regulatory exposure
Data handling
Integration burden
Carlson DelaSerna summed it up well: a decision matrix, not a spend line. Tanya W. went further, describing a Delegation of Authority (DOA) model based on category-specific risk. A box of pens and a cloud security tool shouldn't go through the same pipeline.
Others pointed to RAQSCI: Risk, Assurance, Quality, Service, Cost, and Innovation. In this value staircase, spend is just one variable—often the least important.
From Tactical Buyer to Strategic Partner
Chris D. offered a practical solution: segment the procurement function. Let strategic sourcing teams focus on high-impact categories, while tactical buyers own lower-spend, higher-risk scenarios.
That way, procurement touches everything—but not with the same glove.
Ray Daiboun added that any mature organization should map procurement categories to determine levels of involvement. That’s the only way to scale, especially when budgets and headcount are tight.
And let’s not pretend otherwise: procurement teams are chronically under-resourced. As Eric Edwards put it, sometimes dollar thresholds are just a coping mechanism for burnout.
Automation Helps, But It’s Not a Silver Bullet
A few folks (like Rudy de la Garza and Mathew Schulz) emphasized that modern orchestration tools can help triage intake requests. But they only work if the business logic is solid. Garbage in, garbage out.
Michael Shields responded that these tools often default to spend as the trigger. Without reprogramming the logic, you’re just digitizing a broken model.
Don’t Forget the "Free" Stuff
Multiple comments called out "free" or low-cost solutions—especially SaaS tools. They seem harmless. But as Joël Collin-Demers warned, they often carry data privacy risks, security liabilities, and hidden costs. What starts as a $0 download can end up embedded in your tech stack, triggering $200K renewal negotiations a year later.
Kyle Asay put it bluntly: some "free" tools end up being very, very expensive.
Yes, Risk is Harder to Quantify. But That’s the Job
Chandhrika Venkataraman raised an important tension: complexity and risk are hard to define objectively. That's why spend is often used as a proxy.
But that argument, while valid, becomes a crutch. As Andrew Gouge noted, if you’re a department of one, you need to be ruthless about time allocation. The answer isn’t ignoring small deals. It's ensuring there's structure for how procurement impacts the outcome—even if indirectly.
Michael Shields even responded to this by advocating for a procurement-designed process that everything flows through, even if procurement doesn’t always directly engage.
Scaling Without Burnout
So how do you touch more without burning out?
Set up tiered governance models (as Chris D. suggests)
Empower tactical buyers (not just strategic sourcing)
Use tools, but set the logic right
Build intake processes that assess more than just spend
Partner, don’t gatekeep
Laura Barrett probably said it best: "Empower business teams to self-serve while maximizing procurement's impact."
The Bigger Picture: It’s About Agency
Vincent McMahon offered a deeper reflection: we’ve reduced human agency by tying our roles to job titles. Now we're over-playing the agency of tech, including procurement tools and rules. Procurement shouldn’t become a passive actor in workflows. It should actively shape how business gets done.
And that requires more than process—it requires cultural change.
Conclusion: From Bottleneck to Builder
This conversation revealed a truth that’s both uncomfortable and empowering: procurement’s limitations are often self-imposed. If we only show up for "big" deals, we reinforce the idea that our job is just to say no and cut costs.
But if we show up as enablers of smart risk-taking, accelerators of strategy, and curators of trust with suppliers—we change the game.
So maybe it’s time to stop asking: "Should we be involved in a $10K deal?" and start asking: "What does smart involvement look like at every level of spend?"
Because procurement isn’t a cost center. It’s a value creation engine. But only if we act like it.
What do you think?
How does your team decide when procurement steps in? Have you found a better way than using spend as the gatekeeper? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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