Finding Best Purchasing Books
Historically, procurement and purchasing people are considered kind of clerical workers who are expected to perform basic tasks such as document issuance and price negotiation. However, modern procurement and purchasing practices have become a part of the company's success to reduce costs, improve customer service and create innovative products. And now companies are relying on purchasing performance. Tim Cook who is known to have procurement and purchasing background has created the supply chain revolution at Apple Inc using the procurement purchasing process and strategy.In order to establish a good career path in this area, lifelong learning is key and good books play an important role in your career advancement.
Ranking Factors of Purchasing Books
To come up with a list of top procurement books, we collect the name of the books from Amazon.com. Then, we only include procurement books and books related to purchasing, procurement, sourcing, supplier management, vendor management, supplier evaluation, global sourcing, and supply management on the list. After that, we collect various ranking factors for the procurement books, namely,- Citation Counts: a basic bibliometric method showing how many times each book is cited by other publications. Citation counts indicate how well the books perform against their peers.
- WorldCat: a new kind of bibliometric method showing how many copies are stored in various libraries around the world (info can be retrieved from Worldcat.com) Numbers of copies indicate how useful the procurement books are (in the eye of library staff.)
- Amazon Customer Review: numbers of stars the books get from the reviews available on Amazon.com. We use only positive reviews (3 stars or more) to evaluate a book.
- Amazon Sales Rank: this metric illustrates how well each book performs in the eye of the end-users. Books that are easy to read tend to perform better (a number close to 1 is better.)
Finally, we review each book one by one and apply editorial decisions to select the best books based on overall performance.
#The links below are paid links.
Best Purchasing Books are as below:
1. Purchasing and Supply Chain Management
Pros: This is a classic purchasing textbook that comes with many case studies, useful charts and graphs, and key terms.
Cons: It's a bit expensive.
Who is it for?: Someone new to purchasing/procurement or college students
Our rating: 5/5
Pros: This book is a standard purchasing/procurement textbook that covers a lot of ground. It comes with many mini-case studies.
Cons: It needs more graphics or conceptual models.
Who is it for?: Someone new to purchasing/procurement or college students
Our rating: 5/5
Pros: If you love case studies, this is a book for you. Each chapter comes with 2-3 cases of appropriate length.
Cons: N/A
Who is it for?: Someone new to purchasing/procurement or college students
Our rating: 5/5
Pros: This book literally tells you 64 ways to reduce cost and it comes with case examples.
Cons: Some methods/practices are a bit vague like commercial data mining or technical data mining.
Who is it for?: Experienced purchasing/procurement professionals
Our rating: 5/5
Pros: From our understanding, Category Management is actually supply-based segmentation so this book shows you how to reduce cost based on each type of product/supplier, etc.
Cons: Some charts and graphs look nice but they don't explain the concepts very well.
Who is it for?: Experienced purchasing/procurement professionals
Our rating: 5/5
Pros: This book provides you with key things to know in each area of purchasing/procurement.
Cons: It hasn't been updated for a while.
Who is it for?: Experienced purchasing/procurement professionals
Our rating: 4.8/5
7. The Procurement Game Plan: Winning Strategies and Techniques for Supply Management Professionals
Reference
- Cox, A. (1996). Relational competence and strategic procurement management: Towards an entrepreneurial and contractual theory of the firm. European Journal of Purchasing and supply management, 2(1), 57-70.
Books We Recommend
- Supply Chain Books
- Operations Management Book
- Inventory Control Book
- Lean Books
Pros: This book shows you how to create a purchasing strategy in a step-by-step manner.
Cons: It needs some case studies and more charts and graphs.
Who is it for?: Experienced purchasing/procurement professionals
Our rating: 4.8/5
Do you like purchasing books on this list?
Reference
- Cox, A. (1996). Relational competence and strategic procurement management: Towards an entrepreneurial and contractual theory of the firm. European Journal of Purchasing and supply management, 2(1), 57-70.
Books We Recommend
- Supply Chain Books
- Operations Management Book
- Inventory Control Book
- Lean Books
Last review and update: July 5, 2022