A situation objective proposal (or STP) statement is a succinct summary of why you think there is a problem to be solved or an opportunity to understand (the situation); what you hope to achieve with it (the Goal); and how you suggest doing it (the proposal). All of these are important requirements for developing an innovative procurement sourcing strategy.

The key first step in writing an effective STP is establishing the facts and describing the current situation. Opinions or guesses are sometimes passed off as fact, requiring proof. Ask yourself these questions: –

• How can I describe this situation?

• What do I know about it? Use the keywords “what, who, why, where, when, and how” to create one-sentence descriptions.

• Are these facts, opinions, or guesses?

• What data do I need to collect to validate facts and turn opinions and guesses into facts?

• How urgent is it?

You will then be in a position to precisely define the current situation in a specific and actionable way. A vague situation that cannot be resolved will only lead to frustration and abandonment of the sourcing project.

The second key step is setting your goal. A good way to do this is to use the previous step as a starting point and then describe what a future and better situation would look like. Questions you can use for this step include the following: –

• How do I describe success?

• What are the main differences with the current situation?

• What does this suggest my goals should be?

• Do any of these goals conflict?

• How will I measure these goals?

• What data do I need to collect to produce the measurements?

• What will my initial goals be for these measures?

This last point gives you the objectives of your STP statement.

The third key step is to define your proposal of how you will achieve your objective and thus ensure the opportunity or solve the problem that you defined in the declaration step. Good questions for this step are: –

• What are the specific actions that need to be taken?

• Who will make them?

• When

• What will they need to make this happen?

• What limitations must be recognized?

• Does any of this change our description of the situation or alter our objectives?