EDITORIAL POLICY
Pure Procurement serves digitally-minded procurement practitioners. This page explains how we decide what to publish, how we make money, and the lines we hold between the two.
Our reader is a working procurement professional with a stake in technology: the person deploying source-to-pay systems, running category strategy, negotiating with suppliers, and living with their organization's technology decisions long after the sales cycle ends. When we weigh whether to publish something, we keep coming back to two simple questions.
Does this content help that person make better technology decisions? Will it make them more impactful in their work?
We write from hands-on implementation experience rather than from the sidelines, and we ask the same of our contributors. In our humble opinion, this is our biggest differentiator from other media in our space.
We work hard to stay vendor-independent. Content Partners, advertisers, and other commercial partners do not have approval rights over our conclusions.
In practice, that means a few things:
We don't publish unsourced statistics, and we point out the research methodology behind the figures we do cite. Data points and benchmarks are attributed to a named, verifiable source. If we cannot stand a figure up, we would rather drop it than dress it up.
Our arguments come from practitioner experience, and we say so. When something is opinion, we frame it as opinion. When it is measured, we show our source.
We also try to ensure sources cited have statistically significant data, to avoid drawing false conclusions.
Pure Procurement publishes work from outside practitioners, consultants, and technology experts through our contributor program. We ask contributors to hold to the same principles described here: practitioner-grounded, independent-minded, actionable, and honest about sources. Where a contributor has a commercial relationship relevant to what they are writing about, it is disclosed alongside the piece.
Learn more about how to become a Pure Procurement contributor.
We think you should know how a publication is funded before you decide how much weight to give it. Here is ours, in plain terms.
Pure Procurement earns revenue through:
We do not take equity in the vendors we cover in exchange for coverage, we do not run affiliate links dressed up as recommendations, and we do not accept referral fees. More on that last one below.
A Content Partner Deep Dive starts with the problem and the framework, on vendor-neutral terms. The value to a procurement practitioner has to stand on its own. If a piece only works for readers already sold on the Content Partner, it has not done its job, for the reader or for the Content Partner. Procurement pros should learn something actionable from it regardless of the tech stack they have in-house.
A few ground rules:
If you see a Content Partner highlighted in Pure Procurement material, here is what we are comfortable saying: we believe, on balance, that the provider has a good product and a capable delivery team. That belief comes from one or both of two things:
It also means we align with them on many of the core principles we write about here.
What it does not mean is that they are the right answer for everyone. A strong team and a strong product in one context can be the wrong choice in another. Product strengths may not align with your strategy, objectives, or operating model. Delivery expertise can vary by geography, and some work may be delegated to third parties of variable quality.
Technology and partner choices are always a question of trade-offs. It is why the "build versus buy" and "suite versus best-of-breed" debates never quite die, and why the honest answer is so often "it depends, and some kind of hybrid is probably best."
We look for partners who get that, who are honest about it, and who want to help the market work through those trade-offs: where they are a good fit, and, just as usefully, where they are not.
If Content Partners cannot buy our conclusions, it is fair to ask what they are actually paying for. A few things:
Our independence is part of what makes all of that worthwhile.
We do not accept referral fees, finder's fees, or commissions for sending business anyone's way. That applies to:
The reason is simple. A referral fee is an incentive to recommend whoever pays, and the person receiving the recommendation usually cannot see it. In our humble opinion, our advice is only worth something if it would be the same whether or not anyone got paid. This policy is the only way to ensure this beyond doubt.
Nothing against referral agreements in general. They're just not for us.
We still make introductions when we think they will help. If a vendor, partner, or advisor is worth talking to, we will say so. We just won't be paid for saying it.
That does not make us free of bias. Our Content Partners are the software providers we know best, so they are often the first names that come to mind. When we do recommend one, we will always endeavor to point you to similar solutions or providers to evaluate in parallel.
Like most independent publications, we invest in reaching new readers through organic and paid channels, including reader referrals, paid newsletter recommendations, cross-promotions with other publications, and ads on other platforms.
Our reader referral program is not a referral agreement in the sense described above. Readers who share Pure Procurement with colleagues can unlock bonus content, but nobody is paid to recommend a product or provider, and everyone they refer still signs up on their own.
Whether we recommend another publication to our readers or they recommend us to theirs, we treat these arrangements as advertising, not referral agreements, and every ad is labeled as such.
What we will not do is add anyone to our list without a reasonable signal of consent. Subscribers join by opting in, on our own site or through a recommendation they chose to accept. We will never purchase, rent, or scrape email lists.
The only exception to this rule would be the acquisition of another publication by Pure Procurement, or of Pure Procurement by another publication. In that case, the change would be announced explicitly, and readers would be given multiple opportunities to opt out of the mailing list if the new context no longer fits their reasons for reading.
Our team works across the procurement technology industry, including consulting engagements and, for some collaborators, roles on the vendor side. Rather than pretend those relationships do not exist, we disclose the ones that could reasonably shape how you read a piece.
We get things wrong sometimes. If you spot an error, big or small, tell us and we will look into it. When we fix something meaningful, we note the correction on the piece rather than quietly editing it away.
Questions about this policy, a specific piece of coverage, or a correction can be sent to The Pure Procurement Newsletter via [email protected].
None of the above makes us infallible, but these are the standards we hold ourselves to at Pure Procurement. If you spot something that doesn't align with them, please call us out on it so we can make it right.