Who in our company should be involved in a domain  name purchase decision?

Several parties should be involved, at different stages of the process.  We list them here in their suggested order of involvement.

1. Online Advertising, Marketing and Business Development executives should be involved in evaluating the market and business potential of the domain if deployed effectively.  To the extent possible, they should express the impact of this in financial terms — from the standpoint of the domain being owned by your own company, and also from the standpoint of its being owned by a competitor.
    
2. Your executive(s) for Mexico, Latin America and/or International should add their input to the analysis by the advertising and marketing executives.
    
3. A public relations (or communications) executive should be involved in evaluating the potential for positive news and publicity if your own company purchases this domain and deploys it effectively, and also the potential for negative news and publicity if a competitor does this instead.
    
   The negative potential is particularly pertinent if the public will feel that this domain is so germane to your company that you should have been the one to get it — that is, that by not getting it you were asleep at the switch, you dropped the ball.
   
   This isn't just about sales — it’s about image control, damage control and shareholder value, too.
    
   (But everything interconnects.  The advertising and marketing executives should take this evaluation of the possible impact of any positive or negative publicity into account in their own estimation of the effect on sales.) 
    
4. Your top person in investor relations should evaluate the potential impact of this negative (or positive) publicity on shareholders.  If you don't get the domain — and allow it to fall into the hands of competitors — will shareholders feel you're not as on the ball as your competitors — especially when the one that got it instead of you starts crowing about it, and the business press picks up the story?
    
5. Your legal department should evaluate potential trademark issues, and whether there are any legal impediments to purchase.  They should also consider whether a failure of your company to purchase the domain could be construed by shareholders as a failure of top management's fiduciary duty to stockholders, considering such factors as duty of care, standard of care and due diligence.  In fact, could knowingly letting this domain fall into the hands of a competitor be construed as a failure of duty of loyalty?
    
6. The finance department should do a cost/benefit analysis of the purchase, taking into account the evaluations of the advertising and marketing executives (as well as public relations / communications and investor relations), and should also determine the best payment plan and path to purchase.
    
7. Top management should evaluate the input from the other executives and departments, bearing in mind the corporate vision and strategic plans.
    
8. The IT department may be involved in actually taking possession of the domain for the company.  You should make sure that the registrant is the company, rather than any individual, because the registrant is legally the owner.
    
   IT may enter into the process earlier as well, in investigating the domains ownership and usage history.

Of course, balanced against the desirability for this inclusive team approach to the purchase evaluation is the urgency of making the purchase before a competitor does. 

It would be a pity if you went through a careful, thorough review process, checked all the numbers, and determined that this domain is indeed a must-have for your company — only to discover that while you were deciding, a competitor was buying.

Remember, whatever domain you're considering, there is only one of it.  When it's sold, it's gone.