The customer who never sent two POs

There's a procurement manager in central Iowa we've worked with since 2019. In all that time, she's never sent us two POs at once. Every PO is for one specific delivery, one specific date, one specific quantity. When she needs the next shipment, she sends the next PO. Never a master agreement. Never a blanket. Never a batch.

Why this is unusual

Most procurement professionals love blanket POs and standing orders. They reduce paperwork volume and let suppliers plan further out. We have several customers on standing orders for that exact reason.

So when she first started ordering one-shipment-at-a-time, we asked her about it gently. Wouldn't a master agreement be easier for her? Her answer was: yes, it would. But she didn't want to commit to a quantity she might not need. She'd rather take the slightly worse pricing on individual POs than tie up budget on a master commitment that might shift.

What we learned

She runs a tight inventory. She's never carried more than a week's worth of boxes. She's also never been out. Her discipline about ordering exactly what she needs, exactly when she needs it, has made her packaging cost about 8% lower as a percentage of revenue than any other customer in her industry that we work with.

She also doesn't waste time chasing returns or write-offs because she never has extra. There's a quiet operational beauty to it.

Why we changed how we propose

We used to default to proposing standing orders for any customer doing more than a truckload a month. Now we ask first whether the customer wants commitment-and-discount or flexibility-and-paperwork. Some want one. Some want the other. Neither is wrong, but knowing which they want changes our proposal.

She's never going to write the procurement textbook. She probably should.