Your supplier data lives in 10 different places. And you know it.

Your supplier data lives in 10 different places.

And you know it.

Some in the ERP.

Some in the other ERP.

Some in SharePoint.

Some on the C:/Drive.

Some in a physical folder called “Procurement Stuff (old)”, in a filing cabinet on the second floor marked “beware the leopard”.

Quite a lot in old floppy discs which no-one under the age of 32 actually believes really existed.

Some in emails with subject lines like “Re: Re: Re: Fwd: Supplier thing”.

Some in an off-line application from 2003 which was developed in-house by Bob from IT in the Basement, before the fire.

It turns out there's a third ERP, with more.

And the rest in spreadsheets named by someone who has clearly given up on life:

• Supplier_Master_v7_FINAL.xlsx

• Supplier_Master_v7_FINAL_FINAL.xlsx

• Supplier_Master_v7_FINAL_FINAL_use_this_one.xlsx

• Supplier_Master_v7_FINAL_FINAL_use_this_one_UPDATED(2).xlsx

We’ve all been there.   Some of us are still there.  Some of us have built small emotional homes there, complete with a kitchenette.

And the result is always the same:

• No single version of the truth

• Endless hunting for the “latest” file

• Stakeholders asking procurement questions we can’t answer without a treasure map

• Decisions made on data that may or may not be from 2016

• And a general vibe of “we’re doing our best but the system is actively fighting us”

This isn’t a tooling problem.

It’s a visibility problem.

A governance problem.

A “why do we have 14 places to store things but none of them talk to each other” problem.

The best procurement teams don’t accept this as normal.

They bring supplier data into one place.

They make it clean.

They make it structured.

They make it usable.

They make it something you can actually trust without needing to cross‑reference five sources and a colleague’s memory.

Procurement Says No is proudly sponsored by @Kodiak Hub, and our arrangement means we can say whatever we want about them, and they won’t get upset.

We like @Kodiak Hub because they’ve built something that Bob from IT couldn’t - an SRM platform that gives you a single, structured, 360° view of your suppliers without the chaos, the duplication, or the existential dread of opening another spreadsheet.

And unlike Bob’s system, this one doesn’t require you to “jiggle the cable”.

If this sounds painfully familiar, take a look.

We didn’t believe it either - though we did know about floppy discs - so we now know what @Kodiak Hub says to be true.   And it’s protected from fire.  And Bob.

And now the important questions…

What did you lose in the fire, and what’s the worst supplier file name you’ve ever seen?