Buying committee
Everyone who has a say in a purchase. Roles, not titles.
In 1972 Frederick Webster and Yoram Wind published a model of "buying centres" in the Journal of Marketing. The buying centre is everyone who takes part in this purchase decision, and it can differ from deal to deal. They named roles: users, influencers, buyers (the formal signers), deciders and gatekeepers.
One person can hold several roles, several people can hold one, and a role can be empty. A small tool bought by one manager has one person in all five seats. A bank’s core system has dozens. Roles are found by asking, not by reading the org chart.
Find your way around
Learn it in the course, copy it from a playbook, see it work in a case study.