Who should own procurement: your design team or a dedicated professional? Two designers argue the merits of their approach.

Divide and Conquer

When my team started missing critical details because we were spread too thin, I realized that procurement had become the most time-consuming—and the most draining—part of the business. It’s detail-heavy, but also a constant flow of tracking, expediting, damage claims, back orders and freight issues. It requires a completely different skill set than design, and it was pulling us out of the creative work that moves projects forward. We were spending too much time reacting instead of designing, and that started to impact both the quality of the work and the client experience.