Editor’s note: Last week, we ran a post asking for input on the potential supply chain challenges companies will face during the economic recovery. Several influential and visionary people in our field provided some great insights, including Jeff Onesto, Gerard Aldridge, and Jon Hansen. But I think the response from Jeff Gordon, founder of the Software Licensing Handbook, warranted it’s own post since he tackled a risk that I suspect few companies anticipate and even fewer alleviate. Jeff agreed to expand on his comments as a guest post. Take it away Jeff…

I’ve been giving your question - “What challenges will your supply chain face during the economic recovery/expansion?” - a lot of thought and I have one really large risk that keeps popping into my head based on my experience as a buyer for several large organizations:

“Unfettered buying caused by instant amnesia.”

It’s as simple as that. When the spigot gets turned back on, the result is that people just start buying again without any thought as to what they’re buying or why. They’re able to buy again, so they do. They don’t for a minute think about why they weren’t able to buy for the last little while … only that they are allowed to do so now.

The problem really hearkens back to the fundamentals - what is “strategic purchasing”? Most people can’t answer the question, which means that most procurement teams can’t either … therefore, their organization can’t. And even if they can, procurement isn’t given the power or the opportunity to really control spend (at the end of the day, most serve in an advisory capacity to the business units). All in all, spending is thus an individual business unit responsibility … and each unit almost always operates in a silo, forgetting that there’s an entire organizational structure around them.

So they buy whatever they want, thinking that the slack will be taken up somewhere else. The worst parts of NIMBY and WIIFM rolled together.

That’s what I see as the real problem. But there will be other standard risks, too - contracts that don’t get properly reviewed in the haste to buy, fearful that if they don’t buy now, the chance will pass; pricing structures that don’t get reviewed either… for the same reason as the contractual issues … and worse yet, entire deals that aren’t vetted simply because the right salesperson knocks on the door the day the tap is turned on.

Overall, the reminder warning is that deals that weren’t good yesterday aren’t suddenly good today. In fact, they probably need to be reviewed with greater scrutiny simply because of the increased opportunistic behaviors of everyone involved.

Jeff Gordon is the founder/author of the Software Licensing Handbook, a reference for both buyers and sellers negotiating software licenses.