Buyer-Side Value Governance Self-Assessment
← Back · ACT III · Chapter 22: Embedding Buyer Governance
Five questions about how your organization buys technology, each answered against a written description from 1 to 5. Most organizations can say what a purchase cost. Far fewer can say what it was bought to produce, whether that was ever written down, and whether anyone measured it afterward. This is a short way to see where yours stands.
It runs in your browser. Nothing you choose or type is sent anywhere or saved, and there is no sign-up. Answer for a typical significant technology purchase, not for the policy and not for the best-run purchase you can remember. If two descriptions both fit, take the lower one.
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How the result is worked out
The five answers add up to a total out of 25, which places you at one of five stages, from price governed to value governed. One rule overrides the total: your stage can be no more than one level above your lowest single answer. An organization that answers well on four questions and measures nothing after signature is not value governed, and the result says so.
Evidence matters as much as the answer. For each question, think of one document, one record or one recent purchase that would show a colleague why you chose it. If you can’t name one, the answer counts one level lower. That is the same discipline the assessment asks you to apply to vendors.
Doing it as a team
It takes about thirty minutes when the people who buy technology, the people who pay for it and the people who use it answer together. If Procurement, Finance and the requesting function answer separately, compare the results before doing anything else. The lower one is the real one, and the difference between them shows how far what the organization believes about its purchasing is from what actually happens. Answer again in six months and keep both results. Most of what this can tell you is in the second one.
Keep reading: The Request for Value · The Verification Line · Guides
The Standards Ledger
Some topics need more room than a blog post. Those go into The Standards Ledger, a free newsletter by Michael Brey, sent through Substack. Subscribers get one long essay by email about every six to eight weeks, and each issue also stays online to read later. It is written for the people who approve purchases and answer for what they deliver. Unsubscribe anytime.
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