[eigenvector]

Companies have successfully convinced themselves that anything software is some form of black magic that can only be procured by the IT department and through a small army of Business Development Managers. In my job I have fairly broad discretion to purchase things, generally up to $100,000 I need only write a one-paragraph justification of what I'm doing as long as I'm working within an approved budget.

Except 'IT'.

I can't buy a $5 mouse at Best Buy. Or a Lightning cable to charge my company-provided iPhone. That will trigger long chains of accusatory emails from Accounting and Procurement. Software and 'IT equipment' has to be purchased according to the Policy, which to be quite honest I've never successfully figured out how to do.

It's come to the point that I'd rather buy small things (<$50) out of my own pocket than persecute myself by spending days going through some convoluted process and knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier'.

[nl]

This is where shadow IT comes from and why < $1000 SaaS products work.

Lots of managers have credit cards and will pay the SaaS fee and ignore procurement processes. The the app becomes embedded in the company and the procurement team has to accept the reality of it.

[GordonS]

> knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier'

It's not even just the cost of the item itself - I often have to spend hours of time over a period of months to get something purchased, with multiple levels of management also having to spend time on approvals and chasing people up. The cost of all that time can easily exceed the cost of the item.

Sometimes I hate working for a megacorp :(

[pengo]

I worked for a company in the 1990s which had previously had a very bad experience purchasing custom software, and as a consequence had formally restricted the delegation of authority to business unit leaders to specifically exclude ANY software purchases. As a consequence, if one of my team needed a Microsoft Word license, it had to go all the way to the Board of Directors - and it only got there if the CEO believed it was important.

[rusk]

.. and knowing at the end of it that we paid 3x the market price to get it from our 'Preferred Supplier’

Very clear what’s going on there once you get to the end. Somebody’s got themselves a nice cash cow sewn up.

[jabl]

Doesn't need to be a conspiracy, where somebody is getting rich at the company's expense.

At work we have something similar, where every few years the IT department tenders the 'preferred supplier' for general IT stuff. The logic is basically that by promising the vendors exclusivity, they will bid lower. So yes, sometimes that means we'll pay 3x for a keyboard compared to the price we'd pay at the local discount computer store; I think in general the prices for the stuff that is in the 'tendering portfolio' is very competitive, otherwise it's list price.

OTOH, we save money since the billing from the preferred supplier is worn-in standard procedure, and also employees don't waste company time searching the web for the cheapest/best/whatever keyboard.

[crankylinuxuser]

What's its own level of horrible is Amazon.

If you have a business account, everything gets bundled into that account. Sure, if your org is 110 people big, keeping track is pretty easy. My last job was with a state university. They see thousands of purchases a day, and Amazon bins them onto 1 credit card, and in 1 account. For all 8 campuses and over 50k people.

So the preferred vendor means also integrating with your financial system. So budgeting is easier. But Amazon makes this so damned hard. Even being able to tag purchases would help. But I'm sure ol Besos figured out that makes him lose a dollar.

[jakobegger]

With Amazon in Europe it's especially bad because if you accidentally buy something from an FBA vendor, you won't get a proper VAT invoice. And this makes accounting a pain in the ass.

Every other online store sends you a proper invoice. But FBA vendors will send you sketchy invoices that make it clear they aren't paying their taxes. Which is bad, because that means as a business customer you're on the hook....

[rusk]

I wouldn't say it's a conspiracy so much as "how business is done"

[rwmj]

Considering that software will be running on the internal network of your company, they probably at least want someone they can hold responsible when it interferes with operations / deletes intranet files / opens holes in the firewall / exfiltrates their secrets / etc.

(And yes I know that's because of terrible design decisions in the intranet itself, but has anyone seriously worked at a large company where that wasn't the case?)