tailieunhanh - PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS MANAGERS CHAPTER 6

Chapter 6 PROCUREMENT. Many telecom projects require procurement of equipment of services from outside the company. Most service development projects involve some acquisition - perhaps purchasing ATM or DSL equipment or service components for wireless service. | Chapter 6 PROCUREMENT Many telecom projects require procurement of equipment of services from outside the company. Most service development projects involve some acquisition - perhaps purchasing ATM or DSL equipment or service components for wireless service. Some marketing studies involve outside help. . we might want to contract some user-needs studies for a new ecommerce service. Many operations projects involve acquisition of either goods or services. Any outside procurement should be done with the involvement of the Purchasing department. While most project managers are aware that they should work through Purchasing some are not. Even when PM s are aware of the proper processes they sometimes do not understand why this is necessary. Some even see the purchasing department as a roadblock to their project adding unnecessary bureaucracy. Some of the newer companies do not even have a purchasing department which puts the project managers at risk of legal problems unless they have a good understanding of the implications of purchasing activities. However in most telecom companies of any size the purchasing department is responsible for the procurement processes and this department works closely with project teams. Depending on the organization structure selected for a specific project the procurement person may actually report to the PM for the duration of the project or may continue to work within the home department contributing to the project from there. The project manager and project team also play and integral role in procurement as they define what is required produce the specs and handle the control. The purchasing cycle and implications of the different components are discussed in this chapter. We also discuss contracts and the management of disputes. 114 Procurement Before we start into the details of the purchasing processes and tools let s consider briefly why it is that companies have purchasing departments. It is obvious that a central department .