Procurement is purchasing by any other name - it just sounds more sophisticated. It is also the legal term for pimping - by any other name. The similarities and joke potential are endless.
In the bad old days people who did "procurement" were called "buyers" and were paid $8/hr. Nowadays these folks are called "Purchasing Agents" at the low end to "Relationship Executives" or worse at the snotty end and can be paid many times that - but the job still boils down to a lot of phone calls and misunderstandings and unwarranted assumptions.
Also in the BOD - buyers used to be surrounded with walls of catalogs and 3-ring binders which required constant updating and requests to be kept on mailing lists. Fortunately most companies have replaced these things with websites and the ones that haven't you probably don't want to deal with anyway.
One of the biggest aids for buyers were the "trade Directories" which were much fewer in number and have also converted to web businesses for the most part. This was no small mercy having to
Thomas (Fraser's in Canada)
Swift's Construction
goc: Phases of the Procurement Process
Is Your Procurement Organization Ready For The Big Changes Ahead?