If there's one thing that gets IT managers really aggravated about technology procurement, it's being left out of the picture. Often enough buyers realize that major technology purchases—like data centers or large software roll-outs—need the expert input from their in-house IT team to make the right purchase. Unfortunately, the same doesn't always apply when it comes to purchases of a lower priority, especially if it's a small software deployment or cluster of office equipment, like a multifunction product. Procurement will sometimes forge ahead with business dealings on its own and leave IT out of the picture, effectively shooting itself in the foot.

The more information IT and procurement share about what's coming down the pipeline, the better, says Brad Simpson, partner at Urbandale, Iowa-based Corporate Contracts, which acts as a third-party negotiator for technology purchases. “When you have a good working relationship with IT, you should be able to sit down with them whenever they do their budgeting, have them show you their line items and where they will spend their money,” he says. Procurement and IT can then align senior management to work together on planning to buy the big items for the year, while other team members can plan on new, smaller purchases coming up throughout the year. “Getting involved in IT's planning process is critical to let them know we're here for everything in the long-haul,” says Simpson.

Sometimes office equipment purchases are relegated to a lower priority and aren't given the same considerations bigger tech buys normally might. “If it's going to touch the network or have to be serviced by the IT department, you have to get them involved,” Simpson says. As office equipment becomes more complex, the machines have to interface with the networks and servers that IT maintains.

“If you're looking at the frustration IT has with procurement, they think [procurement] wants to control the decisions and it's [IT's] expertise making the decision,” says Tait Hines, senior negotiator for Corporate Contracts. “But all [buyers] want to do is control the process by which the decision is made.” Often enough the perception of procurement trying to take over IT's role entirely in a tech-buying process is enough to add to a breakdown of communication. The key is not to throttle IT's input into the technology buying process, but to guide them in the planning. “If IT is about to do an RFP, procurement can help them up-front to draft their questions and their business requirements,” says Hines.

If procurement involves IT before RFPs go out, it can help IT refine questions to make RFP evaluations a more efficient process. Hines gives an example of a client he worked with that had more than 400 businesses responding to a technology-related RFP. This client had gone to IT beforehand and asked them to formulate specific questions they would need to know to evaluate how effectively the technology would work with their systems. “We have it set up in such a way that there's only about 20 questions IT has to come through and really examine closely because we set it up so it's easy to score,” he says. “The more planning that we can do with IT and procurement up front, the better result comes out of the RFP situation in the back-end—that's when IT gets why procurement does all these things up-front, because the [RFP] answers are clearer on the back-end, which makes it much easier to move forward.”

Leaving IT out of the tech buying picture may produce an expedited buying process up-front, but a big mess later on. Worst-case scenario: procurement buys some kind of hardware or software that doesn't work properly with the systems already in place, or doesn't fit the requirements of the users. The time and effort wasted in getting faulty technology to work negates any time saved up-front in skipping over IT's input.

That's not to say that IT needs to be involved every step of the way, though. Depending on the purchase, they don't even need to be at the negotiating table, says Simpson. “If you're negotiating something into an agreement that includes versions or specifications on hardware, which adds implications to price, it speeds things along if IT is there,” he says. If IT has the time to be involved with a major negotiation, it can prove valuable in explaining potential cost differences between different types of technologies—differences that a buyer probably doesn't have the expertise to understand to the extent IT would. Even if IT can't be at the negotiation table, giving them a chance to look over specifications and quotes for potential purchases can still help save buyers money.

One of the biggest mistakes a buyer could make is to assume he or she has enough technological knowledge to replace IT's expertise. “IT can educate the procurement person on the basics of telecommunications, where you can do a lot of the legwork and talk the lingo, but you're never going to be an IT specialist,” says Simpson. “Same thing on the flipside, you might be an IT vice president or a CIO who buys a lot of stuff and has been in a lot of transactions, but that doesn't make you an expert negotiator.”