Verbal abuse

Do you know what the following expressions mean? "Optimum life-cycle values",

"Business case agnostic approach",

"The buyside/sellside relationship",

"Managing the commercial work stream",

"Re-engineering multifunctions in the supply chain".

Apparently they are all referring to purchasing. All of a sudden, words such as buyer and seller seem pass.

Purchasing is on the up, heading towards a glorious future of e-procurement, higher salaries and a place on the board. Unfortunately we have acquired some unwanted baggage on the journey, a lexicon of business-speak that could weigh us all down. The argument that it's all right to use jargon in the correct context is a valid one, providing that everyone involved understands it. However, I believe it doesn't enhance our professionalism - rather, it devalues it.

Under the influence

So why do we feel it necessary to overcomplicate what we do with such language? One explanation could be the company purchasers keep.

We have all seen growth in the importance of e-procurement systems over the past few years. Products such as Oracle and SAP ensure that Tesco never runs out of baked beans, we have e-Bay to fill in our lunchtime breaks and, as buyers, we see the massive potential they bring in reducing the cost of low-value, repetitive tasks.

The development of these systems brings us into contact with the world of IT, populated by those who think Star Trek is a documentary series. Type "jargon" into any search engine and it links to "computer" by the end of page one. In this secret world the acronym is king, instruction manuals are a foot thick and error messages are incomprehensible.

Given the increasing importance of IT systems in our lives, it is no wonder that some of this has worn off on us. God forbid your supplier thinks your "DELFOR" is a "Trojan" and blocks it with a "firewall".

Purchasing now also attracts interest from the large management consultancies. They recognise the benefit they can bring to their clients' businesses and the additional profit that can be made as a result. Go and have a look at the management section in any bookshop. All these books take one simple idea, like Lean or Kanban, and then wrap it in lots of words to fill the pages.

As new ideas and philosophies come and go, new bits of jargon is created. Some of it sticks around, and we absorb it.

Then we have the recruitment agencies. Some months ago I received an e-mail about a job. I read it and read it again. The money looked interesting but what would "interacting with SMEs in the buyside/ sellside relationship" actually require me to do? I showed it to four other people before an accountant friend of mine decoded it. "They want you to sell e-procurement software to small businesses," he said.

If the job description is so difficult to understand, what on earth must the product be like and how could you be expected to sell it?

The rise in purchasing's profile over the past 20 years has been dramatic. Most organisations see us as a vehicle for change rather than a drain on resources and appreciate the value that we can deliver. For some reason, some of us seem to feel that along with our newfound status we should have our own language. After all, if lawyers tell us about "caveat emptor" and accountants "holdover your provisional tax liability", then why can't we "drive value streams"?

But law and accountancy are complex. Words, phrases and protocols have exact meanings and areas where uncertainty exist are clearly defined. Lawyers speak to lawyers and accountants to accountants. They need to use a common language. But purchasing really isn't that complicated: we buy what someone else is selling. And if buyers deal with all areas of the supply chain and all types of people, we can't afford our own closed language. If no one understands us, nothing gets done. How will you communicate your ideas and instructions up and down the supply chain if no one understands what you are talking about? Your business objectives will become confused if you try to use elaborate solutions to fix simple problems.

Purchasing is a tough job and jargon helps us to insulate ourselves from a harsh and unforgiving world. It gives us somewhere safe to hide when things aren't going too well.

But the overuse of jargon can make us look insecure to those we come into contact with. This is not the message we want to send to those who employ us to spend their money. We need to attract talented, clear-thinking people to our profession and an excessive use of jargon drives away the very people we want to encourage. We are all hard-working, practical people. This is what makes us professional, not the language we use.

Most worryingly, jargon seems to stop our brains from working.

A few years ago I had the pleasure of hosting a couple of consultants hired by the company I worked for at the time. They arrived already knowing what our problems were - which was rather surprising, as they knew nothing about our business at all.

However, they introduced me to the concept of risk analysis. I quite liked the idea but it was very time-consuming to complete the calculations and the graph so I asked a colleague to write an Excel program to do this automatically. It had been a long and frustrating week so to lighten the mood we called the program Analysis of Risk Spend (ARS). No one noticed at head office or the consultancy; or indeed at the 20 or so subsidiary companies it was distributed to.

Two weeks later at the annual purchasing managers' meeting, and during a presentation on the benefits of EDI and supplier consolidation I introduced everyone to the idea of Total Holistic Opportunity Net Gain.

It's utter rubbish of course, invented the night before to win a bet and brighten up an otherwise dull morning. Yet everyone wrote it down and for all I know they are still using the THONG concept to this day.

Back to basics

Jargon fits the world of purchasing like a cheap suit. This is a good thing as it means we can do something about it before it gets completely out of hand. We don't have to turn the clock back on hundreds of years of procedures and practices to change things now.

We are all guilty and I admit to embracing jargon like a long-lost friend more times than I care to remember. However, this issue is important if purchasing is to progress as a profession.

The good news is that it's a simple problem to put right. So before you write that next report, system upgrade or job specification, stop and think. What kind of message are you sending to the outside world?