Builder Nation: Rahul Dhond on Procurement Strategy

REGENT Head of Supply Chain Rahul Dhond recently spoke with the Builder Nation podcast about procurement strategy, sharing his thoughts on lessons for startups, the importance of building trust with suppliers, and how to prepare for challenges. Watch the video for the full conversation and read below for some highlights.  

Procurement at a startup

“The key difference between procurement at startups versus large companies is the ability to be nimble. And the way that manifests is through trust and communication with suppliers such that when things kind of ebb and flow, you're able to flex with the supply chain and be in the thick with them and working shoulder to shoulder to make sure that you ultimately get the product that you need, which may be different than the product that you wanted when you started.”

How procurement supports engineering

“We have a really, well, multifaceted team [At REGENT] that works together. So, we take a bunch of engineering designs and look for opportunities for suppliers to help us with those engineering designs to come back and integrate them into our primary craft. We're working together on getting the first craft out. What that becomes is interpreting what our engineering team says, analyzing how we can supply or how we can kind of fortify a supplier base with delivering that, and then working with suppliers to make sure that as things change, we can communicate that back and forth.”

Relationships with suppliers

“It's the most important thing because that's where that trust and communication comes from. Ultimately, I like working with suppliers that also have skin in the game. In manufacturing, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. But with suppliers that are communicative and, and ones that have a good relationship with you, even if it does go wrong, they'll communicate that something went wrong.”  

Advice for creating procurement strategies

“The biggest thing is to start early, because everybody needs to be part of the change, whether it is an internal team or a supplier team. The more context of why decisions are made and how designs of all the better the product will be at the end. And then maybe the second piece would be to always have one or two backups. Now, whether that backup is a secondary supplier or an alternative design, every single component on whatever product you're building needs to have these substitutions.”