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Happy Halloween from Zinit, and a new comedy series for procurement teams
To thank everyone who buys, sources and chases suppliers for a living, we made a Halloween film about the scariest night of a sourcing event. It also marks the start of production on The Procurement Case Files, our short comedy series about life in a procurement office, with a new case every week from here.
Happy Halloween from all of us at Zinit. Anyone who works in procurement already has a ghost story or two, and most of them start with a supplier who promised to send it on Friday, so this year we turned a few of those stories into a film for you.
In The Case of the Vanishing Suppliers, Colin has invited twelve suppliers to quote, the deadline is midnight on Halloween, and every one of them has gone quiet. Holmes and Watson hold a seance in his office to reach them, which works better than anyone in the room would like. The spirits answer with five quotes in five shapes nobody can compare, and the other seven suppliers turn out to be lounging on a beach in the afterlife with their out-of-office on, while the clock above the door keeps ticking toward twelve.
Trick or treat: four procurement horrors from the film
Every scare in the episode comes from a real week in a sourcing team's calendar. Here are four of them, each with a small treat that works just as well in an office without candles.
Trick: the supplier who will send it on Friday. Mid-seance, Watson is possessed by the missing suppliers and promises the quote by Friday in a chorus of hollow voices, and Holmes, without opening his eyes, points out that they said the same thing three Fridays ago. Chasing hurts most when it starts the day before the deadline, because by then there is no time left to bring anyone else in.
Treat: ask every supplier to confirm within a few days that they intend to respond, name one person at each who owns the reply, and check in at the halfway mark. A supplier who hasn't opened the documents by then is telling you something useful while you can still invite another.
Trick: five quotes in five shapes. The spirits do deliver, as a scroll that won't stop printing, a letter by raven, a spreadsheet carved into a pumpkin, a stone tablet priced per cubit and a quote on cassette. Holmes reckons it will take a fortnight to make them comparable, which anyone who has normalized supplier responses by hand will recognize as an optimistic estimate.
Treat: send a response template with the request, with the line items, units, currency, lead times and validity period already laid out, and ask every supplier to quote in it. Responses that arrive in the same shape can be compared in an afternoon, and you can send the odd one back with a polite note while there is still time to fix it.
Trick: the midnight renewal. At the stroke of twelve, Colin's thin proposal folder turns into last year's contract, dusty, sealed and renewed all by itself with the same supplier at a higher price, and Colin is mostly relieved that nobody has to have an awkward conversation. It's the quietest horror on this list and often the most expensive one, since a sourcing event that runs past the old contract's notice date tends to end as a renewal, whether anyone chose one or not.
Treat: put the notice date in your calendar next to the expiry date, because many contracts renew automatically unless someone gives notice weeks or months before they end, and plan the event backwards from the notice date.
Trick: the same five suppliers. This one comes from Episode 0, The Case of the Same Five Suppliers, where Holmes and Watson's first client is a company that has bought from the same five suppliers since before any of its buyers were hired. The list grew out of habit, and in a busy year nobody gets a free afternoon to widen it.
Treat: add two or three suppliers you have never worked with to every event, even when the incumbent is likely to win, since new names keep the pricing honest and give you somewhere to go when an old favorite vanishes too.
The Procurement Case Files is now in production
The Procurement Case Files is a short comedy series about life in a procurement office. Holmes and Watson are the detectives who get called in when a sourcing event goes strange, and each episode turns one habit that sourcing teams know from their own calendars into a case the two of them can't quite believe.
Episode 0 went out on October 23, the Halloween special followed this week, and production on the season is now under way, with a new case every week. Each one runs two minutes or less, short enough to watch between two supplier calls.
We build Zinit, an AI-native procurement platform, for the people who do the sourcing work, and that is where every one of these stories comes from. Apart from Episode 0, where Holmes shows Watson the tool he works with, the episodes are made to entertain and keep the product out of the story, so the best review we could hope for is one forwarded to a colleague with a note saying this happened on Tuesday.
Dramatis personae
Meet the cast
Every case takes place in the same procurement department, and the people in it come back from episode to episode, each with one habit that anyone who has worked in a sourcing team will have sat next to. Holmes and Watson get one guest per case, so here is everyone they'll be interviewing this season. Watch the trailer to meet them all at once, or pick anyone in the lineup to read their file.
The detectives
Holmes
The detective
Known forAnnouncing the deduction before he has checked it.
A consulting detective who wandered into a modern procurement department and decided its habits were the most interesting crimes in the city. He reads a supplier list the way he once read mud on a boot, and he's right more often than is comfortable for anyone, though now and then he's wrong in front of Watson, which costs him a little dignity. He admires anyone who brings evidence, so Marcus and Bernadette have his respect, and he takes Brad's slides as a personal insult to reasoning.
On a good dayHe sees the pattern nobody in the building can see, since they're all standing inside it.
Watson
The doctor
Known forDefending every familiar habit with a perfectly reasonable excuse.
Holmes's friend, and the one who speaks for most of us. When a habit gets questioned, Watson offers the reason any of us would give, and he's usually half right, which makes him very good company in a meeting. He keeps a notebook, stays a little too loyal to his cousin's cleaning company, and has a soft spot for Colin.
On a good dayHe catches the step everyone skipped, usually just after Holmes has declared the case closed.
The procurement department
Colin
Category manager
Known forGiving in before anyone has asked him to.
Colin manages the categories nobody else wants, from facilities to office supplies and janitorial, and he has invited the same short list of suppliers for years, because asking anyone new feels like starting an argument. He chases quotes that arrive in five different shapes and watches each deadline turn his sourcing event into a renewal. Victor's specifications are his recurring dread.
On a good dayHand him one clear next step and he runs a real competition.
Gerry
Chief procurement officer
Known forLetting everything wait until it sounds like a fire.
Gerry has run procurement here for nineteen years and retires next year. He has seen every transformation program of his career launched with a party and quietly shelved a year later, so nothing alarms him much. He's preparing Marcus to take over his chair, is quietly amused that Daniela expects it too, and gave his nephew Kyle the internship.
On a good dayBring him a clear question and he decides in one sentence, then goes back to his crossword.
Marcus
Director of strategic sourcing
Known forBringing evidence to every decision, the birthday cake order included.
Marcus is Gerry's deputy and the person most of the building expects to take his chair. He came up through category management by being the one who had already checked, and he still brings a comparison table to everything. He rarely needs more than one sentence, usually a question nobody else thought to ask, and Bernadette is his closest ally.
On a good dayOne calm question from him can end a bad meeting.
Daniela
Category manager, IT
Known forMoving every piece of work toward a more important room.
Daniela runs the categories everyone wants on their résumé, IT and professional services, and she's built for the CFO meeting. She turns any request into a strategic initiative with a steering committee, since strategic work is how people get noticed, and she keeps a friendly rivalry with Marcus over who gets Gerry's chair. She considers Colin's categories beneath her and needs his help more often than she admits.
On a good dayShe wins the CFO meeting when she walks in with the numbers.
Bernadette
Finance partner
Known forReading every line, at her own pace, and refusing to be hurried.
Bernadette is the finance partner who signs off procurement's savings, and in twenty-two years she has never signed a number she couldn't trace back to a baseline. She reads every line of every quote, slowly, and the department has learned to wait for her because she's usually right. Brad's slides don't move her at all.
On a good dayShe finds the error that would have sunk the quarter's savings number.
Victor
Engineering
Known forWriting a specification only one supplier in the world can meet.
Victor represents engineering in every technical purchase, and he has never met a specification he couldn't triple. His specs are so exact that Colin's sourcing event is often over before it starts. He's right about the engineering more often than not, and he and Holmes enjoy arguing about precision for much longer than anyone else enjoys listening.
On a good dayHe catches the technical flaw that would have failed in the field.
Brad
Business-unit head
Known forTurning other people's work into his update slide.
Brad runs a business unit and treats procurement as the slow lane he drives around to hit a date. When the shortcut goes wrong, he turns the fix into an update slide with his name on it. He's genuinely good at getting a room to agree with him, which is exactly what makes him dangerous, and Bernadette is the one person his slides never work on.
On a good dayPointed at the right answer, he gets a room to agree in five minutes.
Kyle
Category management intern
Known forFinding connections instead of suppliers.
Kyle came for the summer and stayed. He's Gerry's nephew, which is how he got the job, and he widens the supplier list the only way he knows, through his family, so his first find was Gerry's brother. He's sure of everything and busy with the wrong task, though now and then his network turns up a real supplier, and he's still learning to check it.
On a good dayNow and then he turns up a genuinely new supplier, mostly by accident.
Where to watch
The Halloween special is on our YouTube channel, and every new case goes out on Zinit's pages on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X. Follow us on whichever one you scroll at lunch, and the next case will find you.
Tell us your scariest sourcing story
What's the strangest format a supplier has ever sent you a quote in? Tell us in the comments under the film on YouTube or under our posts on LinkedIn, and a good one may turn up in a future case, with every name changed.
Happy Halloween, and good luck with this week's deadlines.
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