Christopher Barrat & Mark Whitehead 
Buying for Business 
Insights in Purchasing and Supply Management

Buying For Business provides a simple but comprehensive guide to purchasing and supply. With current literature often academic in focus and unsuited to modern business readers, it offers straightforward and engaging information on the principles and practice of purchasing and supply management that will be of great value to anyone in business who deals with suppliers. Experts Mark Whitehead and Christopher Barrat answer all the key questions facing purchasing in business today, and offer advice on everything from ethics to outsourcing. Diagrams, analysis tools and pro-formas aid understanding, while case studies and bench-marking exercises illustrate and reinforce the learning.

Table of Content

Preface and Acknowledgements.

Chapter 1: Everyone’s a Buyer.

Chapter 2: Managing Purchasing People.

Chapter 3: The Position of Purchasing.

Chapter 4: Managing your Customers.

Chapter 5: Relating to Suppliers.

Chapter 6: Negotiation.

Chapter 7: Measuring Performance.

Chapter 8: E-commerce.

Chapter 9: Outsourcing.

Chapter 10: Globalization.

Chapter 11: Ethics.

Chapter 12: The Future.

Index.

About the author

Christopher Barrat started out armed only with a degree in
law and a bus conductor’s license. He now has over 25 years of
business experience. Working in the UK chemical industry, he was
involved in sales, marketing and corporate purchasing before taking
on more senior roles in ICI as European Sales Manager and
Purchasing Director – experience that has given him a view ‘from
both sides of the table’. He is currently a director of the
Greystone Partnership, where he specialises in developing skills in
purchasing, negotiation, management and communication. He is a
popular speaker and proud to be the first person to get the word
‘Sex’ into the CIPS annual conference agenda. He lives in
Manchester with his family, and works with major blue chip
companies throughout Europe.

Mark Whitehead started his career with a brief spell as a
teacher before finding his vocation in journalism. He covered
education, HR, management and general news for a variety of
publications before specializing in purchasing joining Supply
Management as deputy editor. The baffled looks on people’s
faces when he tried to explain what his magazine covered led to the
idea of writing it all down in a book. He strongly believes that
nothing is too complicated to be explained simply, which is one
reason why he became a journalist and not a nuclear physicist. The
other is that he dropped sciences in the fourth form. He lives with
his wife and young son in north London, where he plays a variety of
musical instruments and beats the congestion charge by cycling to
work.