The 2025 Pure Procurement Annual Report

Archive | Upgrade to Premium | Sponsor

Hi {{FIRST_NAME|readers}},

This week, Pure Procurement turns 6 years old!

It's been a cool ride and I hope it lasts a while longer…

As for the newsletter? You've been getting it weekly for over 2 years now…
(5 years if you count my sporadic editions before then).

The only reason it keeps on going?

Reader trust and delivering value are the two most important things to me. Period.

None of this happens without you taking the time to read me.

Everything I do gets tested with one question: "Does this genuinely help my readers solve real procurement technology problems?"

As such, you're essentially a shareholder of this business…
(higher quality content means higher returns for your time investment)

So, for the second year in a row, I'm sending you my annual report!

Think of it as a Letter to Shareholders…

I want you to know what's happening behind the scenes: the wins, the experiments, the stuff that didn't work, and what I'm planning next.

And as an additional thank you to premium subscribers, I'll pull back the curtains a bit more on all of this year's numbers. You'll see what it means to run a solo consulting/media business…

You deserve full transparency from someone you trust with your time and attention.

Thanks again for reading. It means more than you know.

I hope you'll join me for the next trip around the sun.

Digital procurement content back next week.

Onwards!

📰 In this week’s edition:

Note: Some of the content listed above is only available in the email version of this newsletter. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free to get the next edition.

👀 In Case You Missed It…
My Best Linkedin post this week:

Employees are buying burgers with your office supply budgets...
And you don't even know it's happening…

This year’s report is divided into 4 sections:

Let’s do this!

This newsletter started because I noticed that every time I started a new ProcureTech consulting mandate, there would be notable ramp up time for my client and I to get on the same page…

Procurement technology implementation best practices and the "why" behind them are a fairly niche topic… 😬

Selfishly, I started writing articles to create a repository of my thinking on digital procurement. I asked clients to read articles before starting projects together to accelerate time to value. Eventually, I figured I could make the articles publicly available…

Every company deserves high performing technology after all… 😅

What I didn't expect was how much folks would appreciate the public content… Nor how much it would grow beyond my little eastern Canada client base.

In a nutshell, that’s what happened… And I just ran with it… 🏃‍➡️

These days, I spend about 1/3 of my time on the media side of the business (LinkedIn content, Newsletter, ProcureTech Cup, webinars, whitepapers, etc.) while 2/3 remains consulting work directly with clients, helping make procurement what it can be with technology’s help!

That’s the context for what follows…

Elevate the digital literacy, maturity and, ultimately, impact of procurement functions globally with digital procurement consulting services and educational content.

Pure Procurement is separated into 2 business segments: Consulting and Media.

Everything Pure Procurement does fits into this Jim Collins-style flywheel. If it doesn't fit in here, I don't do it:

It’s all a lot of fun but the challenge is always the same…

There are only 168 hours in a week and it’s very easy to “drown in the interesting” since almost everything is interesting to me…

Part of why I write this annual report is to publicly set objectives to help keep me honest!

On that note, let’s look at how Pure Procurement did in the last year…

Last year I set objectives in my first annual report…

As you read through this section, a ✅ means the objective was met, a 🟡 means I made progress but don't consider it achieved and 🔴 well… That's failure 😅

This is coupled with the data for each channel (e.g. impressions/views, comments/reactions, unique viewer numbers, open/click rates, pageviews, etc.)

In a nutshell, it was another year of strategic experimentation with great results but also hard-learned lessons.

What went better than planned:

What I learned the hard way:

The best part this year:

Receiving messages like these from you:

Solo consulting and content production can be fairly lonely work 😅 Receiving these messages always makes my week!

Finally, here were the top 10 most-read articles published in the last year:

Based on this year's lessons, I'm attempting to doubling down on what's working while addressing the gaps that held me back.

The Focus: Renewed commitment to delivering high-quality content about the "how" of ProcureTech (as in… How do we actually make these pieces of tech work in practice in complex, enterprise ecosystems to get results!)

There's a LOT of content out there about the "what" of ProcureTech (What solutions are available? What technologies should you consider? What's required for project success?) but there's not enough deep, actionable "how-to" content.

That's the guiding star in 2025-26.

Here’s how that translates to objectives:

That's it (and that's enough with young kids) 😂

Hopefully this report gives you some visibility into my business model, how you're part of it, and what to expect going forward.

Nothing on the media side works without you, the reader. You are the lifeblood that keeps all this humming... I take that very seriously.

Quality, integrity, transparency and honesty are at the center of everything I do because I value the trust, time and energy you place in me when taking the time to read my content.

My promise? I will never put something in front of you that I haven't written, edited, used myself or properly vetted with demos, questions, client testimonials, etc.

This is absolutely critical to me.

Otherwise, I am not be accomplishing the mission outlined at the start of this report… I would just advertising for the highest bidder without regard for quality and positive impact on your respective businesses.

So let me end by saying Thank You! I love pushing my limits to spread the gospel of digital procurement, but it isn't possible without you. I appreciate you more than you know.

I’ll report back next year 😊

Joël