How to Implement Strategic Sourcing in Your Organisation

How to Implement Strategic Sourcing in Your Organisation

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Understanding strategic sourcing is step one. Step two is convincing your organisation to stop buying things through a combination of urgency, habit, and “email three suppliers and hope.”
That part is usually harder.
The reality is that most organisations do not fail at strategic sourcing because they lack intelligence. They fail because the process becomes too theoretical, too complicated, or too disconnected from operational reality.
Good strategic sourcing is not about building the world’s most sophisticated procurement methodology. It is about making better commercial decisions, consistently, across the categories that matter most.
This is what practical implementation actually looks like.

Tail Spend | Killing Budgets by Stealth

Tail Spend | Killing Budgets by Stealth

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Procurement teams spend most of their time on strategic categories, the big suppliers, major contracts, and negotiations that actually move the needle.
And rightly so. That’s where the leverage is.
But sitting underneath all that is a different kind of problem: thousands of small purchases, spread across hundreds of suppliers, that never get the same attention.
That’s tail spend.
And unlike maverick spend—where people go rogue and buy off-contract—tail spend happens entirely within the rules. It’s just never actively managed.

Why Maverick Spend is Costing More Than You Think

Why Maverick Spend is Costing More Than You Think

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Let’s be honest. Every procurement team, no matter how polished their process documentation or how enthusiastic their sourcing strategy presentations, has a few “mavericks.”

You know who I mean — the lovable rebels who bypass the approved supplier list because they “just needed it quickly,” or the managers who swear they got a “great deal” by buying something with a corporate card and a wink.

At a glance, these little acts of procurement piracy can look harmless. After all, someone’s just getting paper for their printer, or ordering a “temporary” piece of equipment that stays around longer than most contracts.

But underneath that small transaction lies a big, costly problem known as maverick spend — and trust me, it’s draining more than just your budget.

AI In Procurement | Friend or Foe?

AI In Procurement | Friend or Foe?

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Short answer. Friend.
But only if you stay in charge.

AI is not here to replace procurement professionals. It’s here to take the boring, manual, error-prone stuff off your plate so you can focus on the things that actually matter.

Strategy. Judgement. Relationships. Influence. Negotiations.

Used well, AI makes procurement faster, sharper, and more credible. Used badly, it becomes expensive noise.

AI works best when it supports experienced procurement professionals, not when it’s used to bypass or replace them.

Procurement & Purchasing What’s The Real Difference

Procurement & Purchasing What’s The Real Difference

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You’ve probably heard people use “procurement” and “purchasing” like they’re interchangeable.

They’re not.

One is about strategy, negotiation, and setting your business up to win. The other is about… well… buying stuff.

And yes, you need both — but confusing them can cost you money, time, and more sanity than you can spare.