If you are a typical purchasing professional you need to:

When you see it in writing it looks like an almost impossible job, doesn’t it? It is worse if you start placing numbers next to all of the duties. You might need to place only one or two purchase orders in any given day, but you may need to place twenty or more on another day.

The same goes for interviews of new suppliers and negotiating sessions. You may need to see five suppliers on certain days and ten on other days. Negotiations may take one hour or two or three days.

How do you handle all these duties? One solution is to neglect one or more of the duties on the list, but that is hardly an acceptable way to be successful.

A better way is to set priorities. Do the most important things first. Even that method is not satisfactory if completion of the task takes up too much time. You must split the job up into little chunks. Do a portion today and a portion tomorrow. Try to plan your time by respecting deadlines. Pay attention to the needs of your requesters and management. Let management know when you are truly swamped and tell them how much time you will need or what help you must have to meet schedules.

Make sure you periodically issue up-to-date leadtime reports to your requesters so they know how long it will take to obtain material from suppliers and for new items.