What happens when the methodology meets real scrutiny — not endorsement from the sidelines, but genuine challenge from inside the advisory ecosystem it critiques.
Something happened last week that I didn’t plan and couldn’t have scripted.
It started on a Gartner post. On February 22nd, Gartner published a piece highlighting a potential market correction in the AI sector — noting that the supply of agentic AI technologies was beginning to surpass current demand. I commented, observing that Procurement Insights had published the same measurement eight days earlier, on February 14th.
What followed was not a debate. It was something more valuable — a 72-hour, three-platform exchange with a Director of Global Strategic Sourcing at McDonald’s, in which the Hansen Fit Score™ methodology was tested against the frameworks most widely used by enterprise procurement leaders today.
The exchange was not arranged, not coordinated, and not edited. Every word is timestamped and publicly verifiable.
The Challenge
Dean Smith’s opening response was direct and specific:
“Genuine question though: if the Fit Score methodology were published openly rather than sold by subscription, would that strengthen or weaken its position? Asking because the best procurement frameworks I’ve worked with (O’Brien’s 5i, Cullen’s contract scorecards, Kraljic) all gain credibility from visible mechanics. You can evaluate them, stress-test them, adapt them. A black-box score with extraordinary success claims but no published methodology faces the same trust question the article raises about Gartner.”
This is exactly the question every procurement leader should ask before trusting any methodology — including mine. Dean wasn’t endorsing. He wasn’t dismissing. He was doing what a senior practitioner is supposed to do: applying scrutiny.
I responded by pointing to the published mechanics — the RAM 2025™ structure, the multimodel validation levels, the scoring dimensions — while explaining that the exact calibration is protected to prevent gaming.
Dean pushed back again, and this time he sharpened the distinction in a way I had to accept:
“It describes the Fit Score as a physician’s documented conclusion — calibrated judgment with an auditable rationale. I think that’s an honest description. But it’s a trust-the-expert model, not a visible-mechanics model. Those are different trust propositions.”
He was right. And I said so publicly.
The Pivot
That exchange on the Gartner post prompted me to write and publish “The Kraljic Paradox: When the Diagnosis Is Right but the Instrument Is Wrong” here on Procurement Insights. The piece developed the distinction Dean had identified — between equation-based frameworks with visible mechanics and agent-based methodologies designed for problems those frameworks cannot reach.
Dean read the full article. The next morning, he messaged me directly. He also shared his DM comments in the Procurement Insights blog.
His response acknowledged the argument had moved forward — “The Kraljic observation cuts deep — agent-based description, equation-based instrument. That tension is real” — while continuing to push back on specific points. He noted that O’Brien’s 5i and Cullen’s scorecards are not static snapshots, that the iterative feedback loops in those frameworks move them well beyond Kraljic’s static matrix. He was right about that too.
But then he raised the measurement question that mattered most: the 75%-to-72% prediction validation and the 85–97% implementation success rate are testing different claims. One measures market pattern recognition. The other measures practitioner outcomes. Only the first had been publicly verified so far.
Fair distinction. Precise. And it required a concrete answer.
The DND Story
This is where the exchange shifted from methodology discussion to evidentiary demonstration.
I told Dean about a government MRO procurement operation — the Department of National Defence contract that anchored the original SR&ED research in 1998. The operation was achieving 51% next-day delivery against a 90% contractual target. Every existing framework would have said: optimize the known variables. Recalibrate the metrics. Adjust the scorecard.
We asked a different question — one no framework prompted: what time of day do orders actually come in?
The answer — 4 PM — revealed an entire ecosystem of failure drivers that existed outside every framework’s parameter set: service technicians sandbagging orders to maximize daily call counts, dynamic flux pricing that penalized late-day orders by hundreds of dollars per unit, small suppliers with no customs clearance sophistication, and a courier integration gap that compounded every delay.
None of these lived inside the procurement process. All of them determined the procurement outcome.
An iterative scorecard would have recalibrated the delivery metrics periodically. It would never have generated that question, because order timing wasn’t one of its parameters.
The result once those agents were identified and addressed: 51% to 97.3% next-day delivery over seven consecutive years. Not by optimizing the existing process, but by discovering the behavioral strands the process map couldn’t see.
The Conclusion
Dean Smith’s final message:
“The DND example really lands — that’s exactly the kind of concrete evidence that makes the argument tangible.”
Three platforms. Seventy-two hours. From “Would be curious to see the Fit Score opened up for independent scrutiny” to “that’s exactly the kind of concrete evidence that makes the argument tangible.”
Why This Matters
I am not sharing this exchange because it validates the Hansen Fit Score™. Validation comes from outcomes over time, not from a single conversation — however substantive.
I am sharing it because of what it demonstrates about how procurement leaders should evaluate any methodology, any framework, and any advisory relationship they are considering.
Dean Smith did not accept the methodology because it was explained well. He did not accept it because other people endorsed it. He accepted it when specific evidence answered a specific challenge he raised — and when that evidence demonstrated a capability the frameworks he already trusted could not replicate.
That is the standard every methodology should be held to. Including this one.
The industry has had visible-mechanics frameworks for four decades. Kraljic since 1983. O’Brien’s 5i for over a decade. Cullen’s scorecards across multiple generations of sourcing practice. These are valuable instruments, and Dean was right to cite them. But the implementation failure rate across the procurement technology landscape remains 50–80% despite their widespread adoption.
Maybe the problem isn’t invisible mechanics. Maybe it’s equation-based models applied to agent-based problems — problems where the variables that determine outcomes exist outside the boundaries of what any predefined framework knows to measure.
That is what Phase 0™ is designed to find. Before the vendor is selected. Before the budget is committed. Before the career is on the line.
And if those decisions have already been made? Phase 0™ works there too — as a diagnostic that identifies why an implementation is underperforming and what structural conditions need to change before more resources are committed to the same trajectory. The 4 PM question doesn’t expire because a contract has been signed. Often, that’s precisely when it becomes most urgent.
The question for every organization considering a procurement technology decision is not whether the Hansen Fit Score™ survived one practitioner’s scrutiny. It did. The question is: what is your 4 PM question — the variable no framework is prompting you to ask, that will determine whether your next initiative joins the 50–80% that fail or the minority that succeed?
If you don’t know the answer, that’s exactly why Phase 0™ exists.
The Kraljic Paradox: When the Diagnosis Is Right but the Instrument Is Wrong — the article that emerged from this exchange — is available here: procureinsights.com/2026/02/23/the-kraljic-paradox-when-the-diagnosis-is-right-but-the-instrument-is-wrong/
The RAM 2025™ methodology paper — including the live case study of the multimodel validation framework catching its own overclaim — is available as a free download: When One Model Says Yes and Five Say Wait
The Case for Phase 0: Industry Voices on Readiness-First Transformation: https://procureinsights.com/2025/12/22/the-case-for-phase-0-industry-voices-on-readiness-first-transformation/
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Procurement Insights
When a Fortune 50 Procurement Director Publicly Stress-Tested the Hansen Fit Score™
Posted on February 25, 2026
0
What happens when the methodology meets real scrutiny — not endorsement from the sidelines, but genuine challenge from inside the advisory ecosystem it critiques.
Something happened last week that I didn’t plan and couldn’t have scripted.
It started on a Gartner post. On February 22nd, Gartner published a piece highlighting a potential market correction in the AI sector — noting that the supply of agentic AI technologies was beginning to surpass current demand. I commented, observing that Procurement Insights had published the same measurement eight days earlier, on February 14th.
What followed was not a debate. It was something more valuable — a 72-hour, three-platform exchange with a Director of Global Strategic Sourcing at McDonald’s, in which the Hansen Fit Score™ methodology was tested against the frameworks most widely used by enterprise procurement leaders today.
The exchange was not arranged, not coordinated, and not edited. Every word is timestamped and publicly verifiable.
The Challenge
Dean Smith’s opening response was direct and specific:
This is exactly the question every procurement leader should ask before trusting any methodology — including mine. Dean wasn’t endorsing. He wasn’t dismissing. He was doing what a senior practitioner is supposed to do: applying scrutiny.
I responded by pointing to the published mechanics — the RAM 2025™ structure, the multimodel validation levels, the scoring dimensions — while explaining that the exact calibration is protected to prevent gaming.
Dean pushed back again, and this time he sharpened the distinction in a way I had to accept:
He was right. And I said so publicly.
The Pivot
That exchange on the Gartner post prompted me to write and publish “The Kraljic Paradox: When the Diagnosis Is Right but the Instrument Is Wrong” here on Procurement Insights. The piece developed the distinction Dean had identified — between equation-based frameworks with visible mechanics and agent-based methodologies designed for problems those frameworks cannot reach.
Dean read the full article. The next morning, he messaged me directly. He also shared his DM comments in the Procurement Insights blog.
His response acknowledged the argument had moved forward — “The Kraljic observation cuts deep — agent-based description, equation-based instrument. That tension is real” — while continuing to push back on specific points. He noted that O’Brien’s 5i and Cullen’s scorecards are not static snapshots, that the iterative feedback loops in those frameworks move them well beyond Kraljic’s static matrix. He was right about that too.
But then he raised the measurement question that mattered most: the 75%-to-72% prediction validation and the 85–97% implementation success rate are testing different claims. One measures market pattern recognition. The other measures practitioner outcomes. Only the first had been publicly verified so far.
Fair distinction. Precise. And it required a concrete answer.
The DND Story
This is where the exchange shifted from methodology discussion to evidentiary demonstration.
I told Dean about a government MRO procurement operation — the Department of National Defence contract that anchored the original SR&ED research in 1998. The operation was achieving 51% next-day delivery against a 90% contractual target. Every existing framework would have said: optimize the known variables. Recalibrate the metrics. Adjust the scorecard.
We asked a different question — one no framework prompted: what time of day do orders actually come in?
The answer — 4 PM — revealed an entire ecosystem of failure drivers that existed outside every framework’s parameter set: service technicians sandbagging orders to maximize daily call counts, dynamic flux pricing that penalized late-day orders by hundreds of dollars per unit, small suppliers with no customs clearance sophistication, and a courier integration gap that compounded every delay.
None of these lived inside the procurement process. All of them determined the procurement outcome.
An iterative scorecard would have recalibrated the delivery metrics periodically. It would never have generated that question, because order timing wasn’t one of its parameters.
The result once those agents were identified and addressed: 51% to 97.3% next-day delivery over seven consecutive years. Not by optimizing the existing process, but by discovering the behavioral strands the process map couldn’t see.
The Conclusion
Dean Smith’s final message:
Three platforms. Seventy-two hours. From “Would be curious to see the Fit Score opened up for independent scrutiny” to “that’s exactly the kind of concrete evidence that makes the argument tangible.”
Why This Matters
I am not sharing this exchange because it validates the Hansen Fit Score™. Validation comes from outcomes over time, not from a single conversation — however substantive.
I am sharing it because of what it demonstrates about how procurement leaders should evaluate any methodology, any framework, and any advisory relationship they are considering.
Dean Smith did not accept the methodology because it was explained well. He did not accept it because other people endorsed it. He accepted it when specific evidence answered a specific challenge he raised — and when that evidence demonstrated a capability the frameworks he already trusted could not replicate.
That is the standard every methodology should be held to. Including this one.
The industry has had visible-mechanics frameworks for four decades. Kraljic since 1983. O’Brien’s 5i for over a decade. Cullen’s scorecards across multiple generations of sourcing practice. These are valuable instruments, and Dean was right to cite them. But the implementation failure rate across the procurement technology landscape remains 50–80% despite their widespread adoption.
Maybe the problem isn’t invisible mechanics. Maybe it’s equation-based models applied to agent-based problems — problems where the variables that determine outcomes exist outside the boundaries of what any predefined framework knows to measure.
That is what Phase 0™ is designed to find. Before the vendor is selected. Before the budget is committed. Before the career is on the line.
And if those decisions have already been made? Phase 0™ works there too — as a diagnostic that identifies why an implementation is underperforming and what structural conditions need to change before more resources are committed to the same trajectory. The 4 PM question doesn’t expire because a contract has been signed. Often, that’s precisely when it becomes most urgent.
The question for every organization considering a procurement technology decision is not whether the Hansen Fit Score™ survived one practitioner’s scrutiny. It did. The question is: what is your 4 PM question — the variable no framework is prompting you to ask, that will determine whether your next initiative joins the 50–80% that fail or the minority that succeed?
If you don’t know the answer, that’s exactly why Phase 0™ exists.
The Kraljic Paradox: When the Diagnosis Is Right but the Instrument Is Wrong — the article that emerged from this exchange — is available here: procureinsights.com/2026/02/23/the-kraljic-paradox-when-the-diagnosis-is-right-but-the-instrument-is-wrong/
The RAM 2025™ methodology paper — including the live case study of the multimodel validation framework catching its own overclaim — is available as a free download: When One Model Says Yes and Five Say Wait
The Case for Phase 0: Industry Voices on Readiness-First Transformation: https://procureinsights.com/2025/12/22/the-case-for-phase-0-industry-voices-on-readiness-first-transformation/
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