Bad Buying: How organisations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups, reviewed

Review of Bad Buying: How organisations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups by Peter Smith, see more on his website here.

In this hilarious, fascinating and insightful expose, industry insider Peter Smith reveals the massive blunders and dodgy dealings taking place around the world as private companies and public sector bodies buy goods and services. A recent report showed that over 90% of procurement projects fail. So, why are so many billions wasted on ineptitude, mismanagement and, in some cases, fraud?

By turns an entertaining account of some of the worst procurement scams in history and also a resounding lesson in how not to operate, Bad Buying offers clear and practical advice on how to avoid embarrassing mistakes, minimise needless waste and make sound, strategic procurement decisions on your next initiative.

Bad Buying: How organisations waste billions through failures, frauds and f*ck-ups, reviewed

This is a great read, almost like a Darwin Awards for business. The examples of wide, varied and well explained. It is almost depressing how often, and how seriously there have been major, costly mess-ups. Smith has done his homework well though and it does, potentially, offer readers a massive opportunity to do not like those who have gone before him.

There is a lot of humour infused through out the book too which does help to make this readable rather than draining or depressing. The chapter subtitles also take their names from many many song titles you may recognise. We’ll leave you to see which ones you know, but there are plenty there and we were happy to see The Clash merit a mention within the book too.

The case studies come thick and fast, and make for useful reading. Millions, often billions have been wasted, and if readers can learn from these examples then the book will have been valuable and well worth having been written. The book also begins with perhaps one of the best examples, and most poignant ones. After the US space program spent far too much money developing a ballpoint pen that will work in space, a Russian cosmonaut responds and says yes,  but we just use a pencil…

More about Irish Tech News and Business Showcase here.

FYI the ROI for you is => Irish Tech News now gets over 1.5 million monthly views, and up to 900k monthly unique visitors, from over 160 countries. We have over 860,000 relevant followers on Twitter on our various accounts & were recently described as Ireland’s leading online tech news site and Ireland’s answer to TechCrunch, so we can offer you a good audience!

Since introducing desktop notifications a short time ago, which notify readers directly in their browser of new articles being published, over 50,000 people have now signed up to receive them ensuring they are instantly kept up to date on all our latest content.

Desktop notifications offer a unique method of serving content directly to verified readers and bypass the issue of content getting lost in people’s crowded news feeds.

Drop us a line if you want to be featured, guest post, suggest a possible interview or just let us know what you would like to see more of in our future articles. We’re always open to new and interesting suggestions for informative and different articles.

If you would like to be featured in our podcast series drop us a line & don’t forget to sign up for notifications for our latest episodes and follow us on Twitter, Linkedin, SoundCloud, iTunes or your own favourite podcast platform.

Contact us, by email, twitter or whatever social media works for you and hopefully, we can share your story too and reach our global audience. We are agile, responsive, quick and talented, we look forward to working with you!

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at Simon@IrishTechNews.ie or on Twitter: @SimonCocking