Procurement negotiation dossier

How can you turn a supplier dossier into defensible objectives, arguments and concessions with the help of AI?

1250 € per session, excl. VAT

In short

In a half-day session lasting 3 hours you build a supplier negotiation dossier with the help of generative AI. You distinguish facts from assumptions, define your room for manoeuvre, prepare conditional exchanges and test your arguments before checking the consistency of the dossier.

Why this training?

A negotiation focused solely on price can obscure issues relating to lead times, quality or continuity of supply. Preparing objectives, limits and reciprocal commitments enables you to decide what can be traded without compromising operational needs. AI helps organise the documents in the dossier and anticipate supplier objections. However, it knows neither the seller’s intentions nor their actual costs: its proposals must remain assumptions until supported by evidence. Ongoing case study: The fictitious organisation « Ocrélis Assemblage » needs to renew a contract for machined parts. Its supplier is requesting a price increase, although several deliveries have been delayed. An alternative offer exists, but its qualification has yet to be confirmed. The training dossier contains fictitious quotations, order history and delivery records. Transfer to the workplace: Before your next supplier meeting, reuse the template with authorised data, have your limits approved by the procurement decision-maker and check the evidence supporting each argument. After the meeting, compare the concessions considered with those actually exchanged to improve your next preparation.

Objectives of this training

  • Extract relevant facts and flag missing information.
  • Define a target, an acceptable limit and a fallback option.
  • Build a set of arguments linked to the documents in the dossier.
  • Formulate concessions conditional on explicit reciprocal commitments.
  • Assess and then correct the consistency of a dossier before the meeting.

Who is it for and what are the prerequisites?

Roles and tasks concerned

  • Buyers and supply planners preparing contract renewals or requests for supplier quotations.
  • Operational managers involved in trade-off decisions and procurement meetings.

Prior skills

  • Have previous experience using a generative AI assistant to draft or summarise text.
  • Know the components of a supplier offer and the needs of the internal requirements owner.

What you will work on

  1. Assessing supplier documents

    Objective: Separate evidence, interpretations and unknowns. Comparability of offers, contract scope, service history and data confidentiality.

  2. Setting the mandate and fallback option

    Objective: Define an acceptable negotiating range. Target, walk-away point, internal priorities, total cost and alternative if no agreement is reached.

  3. Building conditional exchanges

    Objective: Prepare defensible arguments and sustainable concessions. Verifiable arguments, open questions, order of requests and the logic of reciprocal commitments.

  4. Testing and checking the preparation

    Objective: Check the robustness of the dossier before the meeting. Opening the meeting, responding to pricing pressure, pausing for approval and final checks.

What you take away

  • Matrix of facts, assumptions and information to obtain.
  • Mandate sheet: objectives, limits, approvals and fallback option.
  • Table of arguments, concessions and reciprocal commitments.
  • Meeting outline and completed checklist.

Method and assessment

  • Short teaching inputs followed by immediate practice on the ongoing case study.
  • Individual work followed by work in pairs, with peer review of the outputs.
  • Guided group review: what works, what needs correcting and what remains a human decision.
  • Preparation: Arrange access to a generative AI tool authorised by the organisation; no particular commercial tool is required. Read the fictitious dossier provided; any personal example must be anonymised and authorised before use.

Observable criteria: Each factual argument refers to an identifiable document; assumptions are flagged. ; Targets and limits cover price, lead times and quality without contradicting the requirement. ; Each concession has a reciprocal commitment and an acceptance condition. ; The fallback option specifies its constraints and the checks still required. ; The final review identifies discrepancies in the initial dossier and documents their corrections..

Frequently asked questions

Does AI set the target price?

No. It helps structure assumptions; the buyer validates the target using the documents and the mandate.

Can you use a real contract?

The exercises use fictitious or anonymised cases, exclusively within tools authorised by the organisation.

Does the supplier meeting take place during the session?

No. A simulation allows you to test the preparation without making any commercial commitments.

How is the quality achieved measured?

The checklist checks evidence, mandate consistency, reciprocal commitments and the fallback option; discrepancies are identified and then corrected.

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