People often mistake purchasing for procurement and vice versa or use the terms interchangeably. These are, however, quite distinct operations. Purchasing, in a nutshell, is the final stage of simply ordering goods. Procurement, on the other hand, is made up of many steps before and after purchasing, including research, sourcing, negotiating, supply chain management, transport & logistics, budgeting, project management and installation.
If you think of purchasing as a one-step process – similar to clicking ‘Buy Now’ online, then procurement is the precursor to purchasing and the mechanism that gets the products to site.