Time Management Tips For Lone Wolf Procurement Professionals
Lone wolves are always watching the clock!
As a lone wolf procurement professional, you wear many hats. From sourcing and negotiating to contract management and stakeholder relations, your plate is always full. But what if you could not just keep up, but truly excel? Let’s talk about some actionable time management strategies specifically tailored for solo procurement to help you optimize your day and amplify your impact.
The Lone Wolf's Unique Time Challenges:
Being a one-person procurement show means:
No Delegation: Every task, big or small, rests on your shoulders.
Constant Context Switching: You're frequently jumping between urgent operational issues and long-term strategic initiatives.
Limited Bandwidth for Research & Development: Keeping up with market trends and new technologies often takes a backseat.
High Pressure to Deliver: Your performance directly impacts the company's bottom line and operational efficiency.
Prioritization is Your North Star: The Eisenhower Matrix Applied
Urgent & Important (Do First): Crises, critical deadlines, key negotiations. Tackle these immediately.
Important, Not Urgent (Schedule): Strategic sourcing projects, supplier relationship building, process improvements. Dedicate specific, uninterrupted blocks of time. This is where your long-term value is built, and where you may need to stretch in order to tread water.
Urgent, Not Important (Delegate/Automate if Possible): Routine inquiries, administrative tasks. As a Lone Wolf, true delegation is rare, but consider self-service portals for internal stakeholders or exploring simple automation tools (more on this later).
Not Urgent, Not Important (Eliminate): Time-wasting activities, unnecessary meetings. Be ruthless in cutting these out, and be prepared to make your case for why you’re not addressing these tasks.
Leverage Technology as Your "Assistant"
Automated Reminders & Task Management: Use tools like Asana, Trello, or even simple calendar reminders to keep track of contract renewals, payment terms, and project milestones.
Standardized Templates: Create templates for RFPs, contracts, supplier onboarding, and internal communications. This saves immense time on repetitive tasks. Google “Quick Parts for Outlook” and develop a catalog of frequently used snippets you can easily drop in emails to save time every day.
Use What You Have Available: Most companies have a ticketing system like Jira or ServiceNow. Look into utilizing that as a basic intake system for requests. If you don’t have a ticketing system, look to the Microsoft suite for tools like MS Forms to populate requests in an Excel spreadsheet. Use Rules and Alerts in Outlook to organize emails by spend category. Start small and build a new efficiency every week.
Strategic Communication & Stakeholder Management:
Proactive Updates: Keep key stakeholders informed about procurement progress and challenges, reducing inbound queries. Consider using different communication modes (audio messages/Looms) and inject a little personality into your communications.
Set Expectations: Clearly communicate your availability and response times to manage internal expectations.
Educate Internally: Empower colleagues with self-service resources for common procurement questions (e.g., a simple FAQ document). Google’s NotebookLM is great for creating self service portals on different topics (be sure to check with your CISO before introducing any new technology!).
Conclusion:
Being a lone wolf in procurement is demanding, but with strategic time management, it's also incredibly rewarding. By prioritizing effectively, embracing technology, and managing stakeholder expectations, you can transform from a reactive order-taker into a proactive, value-driving strategic partner.
