Technology Procurement Part 2: My top 7 lessons from $2bn spent

November 24, 2025

Technology procurement can feel overwhelming: constant outreach, competing priorities, complex stakeholder politics and a market that evolves faster than your approval process.

Over the years I have been responsible for more than $2 billion in technology procurement decisions. I am now on the other side of the table, selling technology into large organisations and seeing how different buying teams behave.

At CIM, we work with major real estate owners and operators to improve building performance. Many of the same procurement patterns show up again and again, regardless of sector.

These are the seven lessons I keep coming back to. They are not theoretical. They are the habits that consistently produce better outcomes, faster, and help avoid some very expensive mistakes.

1. Treat procurement as structured problem-solving, not shopping

Your job is not to pick a shiny product. It is to solve a business problem or unlock a clear opportunity.

Most procurement processes still start with a solution in mind:

“We need a new platform.”
“We need automation.”
“We need AI.”

I start instead with a structured problem statement covering:

Impact - what this is costing in dollars, risk or missed opportunity
Symptoms versus causes - what we think is driving it, and what we do not know
Users - who will actually use the solution and how they work today
Constraints - budget, compliance, timeline, integration limits
Outcomes - what success must look like and how we will know

Then I hold that lightly. Good technology either tackles the root cause more effectively or offers a better path to the outcome. If a vendor simply echoes my initial thinking back to me, without challenging or refining it, that is a red flag.

McKinsey has shown that large IT projects, on average, run significantly over budget and under-deliver on value. Poorly defined problems are one of the underlying reasons.

At CIM, the most productive conversations are when customers bring us a clear operational challenge, for example energy overspend or inconsistent thermal comfort, but are open to being challenged on what is really causing it. That is where we move from shopping to genuine problem-solving.

2. Start with your existing vendors, but be honest about fit

If an existing vendor is already operating in the relevant domain and has a strong track record, they should usually be your first port of call.

They:

Know your environment and constraints
Have reputational and commercial skin in the game
Can often extend existing products faster and with less risk

I encoriage periodic “innovation sessions” with key vendors where 1 to 3 year objectives are shared, along with constraints and performance targets. For example:

“Within 12 months, I want a 15% productivity uplift in this team. Any solution must deliver at least a 2x ROI with payback inside a year.”

Some of our largest CIM customers do this with us. They set clear targets around portfolio energy savings or maintenance productivity and ask, “What can PEAK do to help us get there, and what would need to change operationally?”

This turns vendors into design partners rather than petitioners.

But there is a limit. If what you need falls well outside their core capability, being their first customer for something entirely new may be riskier than working with a specialist that has already solved the problem. Your role is to know when to lean into an existing partner, and when to cast the net wider.

3. Use honesty questions to save time and money

Most buyers under-use the simplest tool they have: direct, honest questions.

My favourites are:

“If you were in my seat, knowing what you know about our business, how would you solve this?”
“How do I explain this to my stakeholders as a smart decision, not just a list of options?”
“Where has this not worked for your clients? Why? What mistakes do people make?”
“If we proceed, how should we measure success, and what will we need to do?”
“Where do you see my peers heading next in this area? What might I regret not doing now?”

When prospective CIM customers ask us these questions, the conversation quickly becomes more useful. Instead of a generic product demo, we talk about where PEAK is a strong fit, where it is not, and what has to be true (data, engagement, change champions) for them to see the outcomes they want.

Vendors see dozens or hundreds of environments like yours. You are paying, directly or indirectly, for that experience. Use it.

4. Keep discovery small and transparent

Once I have a clear problem definition and input from existing vendors, I usually run a short discovery process with a very small number of potential suppliers, typically three.

I am upfront from the beginning:

“Here is the problem, here is what we are considering, and here is how we will test the market for competitiveness and innovation.”

The brief is simple:

Show how your solution addresses this specific problem
Surface additional value we might not have considered
Be concrete about time to impact and the change required

Three contenders is almost always enough. Ten vendors will bury you in information and push you into artificial scoring systems. With a small, serious group, you can compare substance, not slideware.

When CIM is one of those contenders, the best buyers are clear about the scenarios they care about: faster issue resolution, reduced manual fault-finding, better portfolio visibility. This clarity helps both sides decide if there is a strong fit.

Sector data backs up the need for focus. JLL reports that adoption of data science and modelling tools in real estate rose from 26% to 40% in just one year, as owners shifted from cost reduction to strategic use of technology for decision-making and sustainability. With that many options on the table, a tight discovery process becomes essential.

5. Build a real design team, and do not be afraid of a bake-off

Good procurement is a team sport. I will usually make sure there is:

A business owner who really cares about the outcome
A champion who will live with the day-to-day reality
A small group of end users who will test the promises against reality

Then I involve vendors in working with that group on a tangible design or trial.

Sometimes I will run a “bake-off”. Two vendors each get a limited scope trial, with clear metrics and timeframes. The winner gets the broader deployment.

We have been part of bake-offs where PEAK runs alongside another analytics or FDD solution in a subset of buildings. The customer compares speed to value, time saved for operators, and how quickly actions translate into real performance improvements. It is healthy pressure for everyone involved.

This approach:

Forces a focus on real-world usage and outcomes
Surfaces integration and change issues early
Creates competitive tension around value, not just price

6. Negotiate around value and risk, not just price

When vendors “lose on price”, they almost always lost on perceived value.

I keep three principles in mind when negotiating:

Price is relative. A solution that delivers more value or carries less risk can justify a higher price and still be the better choice.
Make constraints explicit. Saying “Our budget is $X and we will pick the best ROI under that” is more productive than playing games.
Use risk as a lever. Pilots, shorter initial terms, adoption-based milestones and shared success metrics all shape the risk profile, and therefore the commercial structure.

The latest KPMG Global Tech Report shows that around 63% of organisations report performance improvements from digital transformation over the past two years, with many leaders seeing profit or performance uplifts of more than 10%. Those gains tend to come where technology, value and risk are tightly aligned, not where simply the lowest price wins.

On the CIM side, some of our strongest partnerships started with a focused initial scope, clear risk-sharing and transparent ROI expectations. Because value and risk were well understood, the price discussion was rational rather than adversarial.

Price matters. But if you obsess over it in isolation, you will make worse decisions.

7. Treat go-live as the starting line

In previous eras, just getting a system live was a victory. Modern SaaS tools are generally easier to switch on, so the real challenge has shifted to adoption and value realisation.

I try to change the mental model from:

“Project complete when we are live”

to:

“Project starts when we are live.”

That means making sure you have, before you sign:

A clear onboarding and adoption plan
Agreed responsibilities for training and support
Identified champions and early adopters
Defined usage and outcome metrics, not just technical milestones

This is particularly relevant in real estate technology. A recent JLL report on AI in building operations found that while AI use in buildings has surged to more than 90%, only a small minority of organisations report achieving most of the outcomes they aimed for. This is a classic case of adoption outpacing effective implementation.

At CIM, our most successful customers treat PEAK as a change program. They embed the platform into weekly routines, use issue closure and engagement as operational KPIs, and keep refining how teams work with the insights. The technology is stable; the way it is used keeps maturing.

Technology that is not used does not just sit quietly. It consumes budget, attention and trust. Value realisation has to be built into your procurement thinking from day one.

Bringing it together

None of these lessons are complicated. The difficulty is applying them consistently while juggling everything else on your plate.

If you:

Frame procurement as problem-solving
Start with existing vendors but stay honest about fit
Ask the blunt questions early
Keep discovery small and focused
Build a real design team and test in the real world
Negotiate around value and risk
Treat go-live as the start, not the end

you dramatically improve your chances of getting real value from your technology investments.

Across my $2 billion of procurement decisions, the teams that operate this way do not just buy better tools. They use technology to close the gap between strategy and execution.

That is where procurement stops feeling like something done to you and becomes one of the most powerful levers you have.