I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Purchasing Services: The Pitfalls, Part I.”

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Purchasing services is a challenge for those who have strictly purchased goods in the past. As I alluded to in the article, there are many pitfalls. The article itself, being the first in an irregular series, focused on on-time delivery.

One additional tip that I’ll add here is to quiz your supplier not on lead time, but rather on completion date. For example, you could ask your supplier to respond to something like this…

“If I placed my order on July 1, when will the service be complete? What if I placed the order on July 15? July 30?”

Sometimes, the completion date is dependent upon your organization. We’ll talk more about that topic and its specific challenges in Part II.

So stay tuned!

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