Procurement & Buyer Interview Practice: Savings Calculations, Should-Cost, TCO, Quote Comparisons, Price Indexation & Negotiation Cases

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Calculate the annual savings of six contracts, split them into hard cost reduction and soft cost avoidance, and show how much of the hard savings lands in this financial year.
• Build a should-cost price for a machined part from material, machine and labour time, overhead and margin, and measure how far the supplier's quote sits above it.
• Compare three suppliers on total cost of ownership per unit – landed cost, the cost of holding stock and the cost of defects – and see why the lowest price is not the cheapest supplier.
• Turn early-payment discounts into an annual interest rate, decide whether to take them against your cost of capital, and put three quotes with different terms on one normalised unit cost.
• Check a supplier's price-increase request against a fictional index clause: index changes, the weighted formula change, the cap and the new allowed price.
• Measure each supplier's share of spend, flag single-source suppliers, build a weighted risk score and show how much of the spend depends on suppliers you cannot replace quickly.
• Derive a walk-away price from the best alternative, a target from should-cost, an opening offer, and a concession plan that lands exactly on the target.
• Answer a timed set of questions on one category exhibit – weighted increase, the biggest % riser and the cost above an index-only increase – and score your last practice round.