Proximity is now SPA LEARN MORE 
The best procurement is not merely a transactional function focused on purchasing things or shaving costs off a bottom line. Procurement can be a strategic enabler that underpins efficiency, compliance, and innovation.
Healthy and sustained relationships are the real infrastructure that supports procurement success. Relationships take time, trust, communication, and empathy. Without them, procurement is reduced to paperwork and policy compliance. With them, it becomes a driver of strategic outcomes.
It’s not the rules or frameworks that make procurement work, it’s the people who understand how to use them effectively in collaboration with others. Value for money, a cornerstone of the Commonwealth Procurement Rules, cannot be achieved in isolation. It emerges from early engagement, proactive collaboration, and deeply cultivated relationships – both internally with agency teams and externally with suppliers and stakeholders.
Elevating procurement to the executive table
This starts with engaging senior executives through data. Presenting a consolidated view of procurement expenditure – current, future and committed – transforms procurement from an invisible overhead to a strategic imperative. Agencies often don’t realise how much of their budget flows out through contracts until the numbers are put in front of them.
A focus on relationships inside the organisation
Internally, procurement has a critical role to play in delivering the strategic goals of every business area. But too often, procurement staff behave like passive administrators, simply guiding others through a process. Procurement professionals must lead with insight, help define outcomes, and understand the business well enough to challenge assumptions and improve approaches.
Likewise, procurement’s relationship with finance shouldn’t be siloed. They share natural overlaps, from budgets and approvals to governance and audits. These are not just points of compliance, they are opportunities for efficiency, risk reduction, and better financial decision-making. Similarly, procurement’s alliance with legal teams should begin earlier, especially in high-risk procurements, not just when the contract needs signing.
And it’s not only about collaboration during active procurement. A proactive procurement team must work with the business areas before procurement begins. Early engagement helps shape requirements and timelines, preventing unrealistic expectations and last-minute compromises.
Nurturing supplier relationships in both sickness and in health
A well-managed supplier relationship can drive continuous improvement, innovation, and risk mitigation. Yet many government contract relationships follow a predictable pattern: intensive involvement during the procurement phase, followed by diminishing engagement after contract execution.
This “set and forget” mindset is not only wasteful, it’s dangerous. Good supplier management requires a cadence of engagement, clear roles, escalation pathways, and long-term planning. Strong relationships help suppliers anticipate agency needs, respond to challenges, and even invest in their own capabilities to better serve.
When supplier meetings are skipped because “everything’s fine,” early warning signs are missed. When they’re avoided because things aren’t fine, the problems only fester. Regular, structured, data-informed dialogue should be the norm, not the exception. And when things are going well, that’s precisely the moment to reinforce relationships, not retreat from them.
Beyond the contract – thinking systemically
Engaging with the broad base of suppliers outside of active contracts, especially in sectors with scarce or highly specialised capabilities, is crucial. Government procurement can’t afford to be reactive. Building understanding and visibility with key suppliers, even before tenders are issued, ensures capability and readiness when the time comes.
We also need stronger collaboration with industry bodies. They offer early insight into market shifts, insurance trends, workforce shortages, and technology innovation. Without this engagement, procurement runs the risk of designing processes that are out of step with the realities of the market, unintentionally locking out vital suppliers or missing opportunities for better outcomes.
Collaboration beyond walls
Finally, procurement leaders need to look sideways. Inter-agency collaboration remains underutilised, and it’s a missed opportunity. Sharing supplier performance data, standardising templates and policies, learning from audit findings, or even pooling workforce training can prevent duplication, reduce risk, and improve capability across government.
Crisis response, like we saw during COVID-19, showed just how siloed agencies can be when it comes to procurement, but also how they can move towards more collaborative and innovate procurement when crisis call for it. Inter-agency collaboration should be built into our everyday processes, not just triggered by disaster.
Relationships don’t build themselves
Procurement professionals need to ensure that a part of their time each week is allocated to relationship building. To lead conversations and invest in the relationships that will carry agencies to better outcomes. Because in procurement, as in all of government, people (not paperwork) make the difference.
In this article Sean and Andrew explore and summarise the insights raised in a discussion they presented at The Day Out, an annual professional development day for public sector employees hosted by SPA Australia. The topic was around Building and sustaining Key Relationships for Procurement Success. To watch the full conversation, the webinar can be accessed here.
