Procurement for the Real World: Build Strategy: Choose Right Commercial Strategy

The market you face is rarely the market the textbook describes.Procurement strategies often begin with neat assumptions: healthy competition, credible alternatives, willing suppliers and enough leverage to negotiate.The real world is messier.Incumbent advantage. Concentrated supply markets. Weak BATNAs. High switching costs. Sole-source situations. Stakeholders demanding competition where meaningful competition barely exists.Build the Strategy is a practical guide to developing a procurement strategy around the market you actually have - rather than the one the model assumes.Part of the Procurement for the Real World series, this book explores how to: - Understand the commercial reality before choosing your sourcing approach - Assess market concentration, supplier power and genuine competitive tension - Recognise where your leverage actually comes from - and where it doesn't - Decide when to aggregate, consolidate, compete or negotiate - Approach incumbent and sole-supplier situations intelligently - Identify hollow competitions before wasting everyone's time running one - Turn analysis into a commercial strategy that can actually be executedNo theory for theory's sake. No pretending every sourcing exercise fits neatly into a matrix.Just practical procurement principles, commercial judgement and better decisions.Because a procurement strategy that ignores market reality isn't a strategy. It's a plan waiting to fail.