Procurement & sourcing

Bringing spend under management with a process people will actually follow.

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What is it?

Source-to-pay covering supplier management, sourcing events, contracts and purchase-to-pay. Most procurement problems are compliance problems: the policy exists but buying around it is easier. We design for the path of least resistance to be the compliant one.

For a technical reader

Spend analysis depends on a usable taxonomy, and most organisations do not have one: supplier names vary, categories are inconsistent, and a significant share of spend never touches a purchase order. Classification is therefore the first real deliverable. On the process side, compliance is a design problem rather than a policy problem — if raising a compliant requisition takes longer than putting it on a card, the policy loses regardless of what it says, so measured cycle time on the compliant path is the metric that matters.

Our services

Spend analysisClassified spend across the estate, including off-contract and non-PO invoices.
Category strategy and sourcingPrioritised categories with structured sourcing events and evaluation.
Source-to-pay implementationProcess design and system configuration from requisition through to payment.
Supplier managementOnboarding, qualification, risk screening and performance review.

What’s covered

Spend analysis
Classified spend across the estate, including off-contract and non-PO invoices
Category strategy
Per-category approach, sequenced by addressable value rather than ease
Sourcing events
RFI, RFP and reverse auction process with structured evaluation
Contract lifecycle
Authoring, approval, repository and renewal alerting
Supplier management
Onboarding, qualification, risk screening and performance review
P2P compliance
Making the compliant buying route faster than the workaround

Business problems we solve

We do not know what we spend with whomClassification across systems makes consolidated spend visible, usually for the first time.
Maverick buying is widespreadBecause the compliant route is slower. We measure both paths and fix the gap.
Contracts auto-renew unnoticedA contract repository with renewal alerting turns a surprise into a decision.
Negotiated savings never appearTracking from signature through to the ledger is what distinguishes a claim from a result.

Our delivery approach

  1. 01
    See the actual spendClassified spend analysis across the estate, including the invoices that never touched a purchase order.
  2. 02
    Prioritise by opportunityCategories sequenced by addressable value rather than by which is easiest.
  3. 03
    Make compliance the easy pathIf raising a compliant request is slower than a corporate card, people will use the card. The process has to win on convenience.
  4. 04
    Track realisationNegotiated savings tracked through to the general ledger, not declared at signature.

Solutions & project types

Examples of the work we take on in this area. These describe project shapes, not named client engagements.

Spend visibility programmeConsolidated classified spend as the basis for category prioritisation.
Category sourcing eventA structured RFx with weighted evaluation and documented award rationale.
Source-to-pay rolloutRequisitioning, approval, receipting and invoice matching configured end to end.
Supplier risk screeningOnboarding with financial, compliance and concentration risk checks.

Technologies & platforms

Source-to-pay

  • Oracle Procurement Cloud
  • Coupa
  • SAP Ariba
  • Jaggaer

Contracts

  • Oracle Procurement Contracts
  • Icertis
  • DocuSign CLM

Analytics

  • Spend classification
  • Oracle Analytics Cloud
  • Power BI

Supplier risk

  • Supplier qualification management
  • Third-party risk screening

Integration

  • ERP integration
  • Punchout catalogues
  • cXML
Learn this field

Where to start with procurement & sourcing.

Secondary to the work itself, but genuinely useful if you are building the skill. Every link goes to official documentation or an official channel.

Beginner

  • Procure-to-pay process, step by step
  • Direct versus indirect spend
  • What a three-way match is and why it exists
  • Purchase order, contract and catalogue basics

Intermediate

  • Spend classification and taxonomy design
  • RFx design and weighted evaluation
  • Contract lifecycle and clause libraries
  • Supplier qualification and risk screening

Advanced

  • Category strategy and should-cost modelling
  • Total cost of ownership analysis
  • Supplier relationship management at scale
  • Savings methodology and ledger-level tracking

Certifications

  • CIPS Level 4 Diploma in Procurement and Supply
  • ISM Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSM)
  • Oracle Procurement Cloud: Implementation Professional

Practice projects

  • Classify one year of invoice data into a category taxonomy
  • Identify spend that never touched a purchase order and explain why
  • Design an RFx with weighted criteria and score two mock bids
  • Time the compliant requisition path against a corporate card
  • Trace one negotiated saving from contract to the general ledger
FAQs

Questions we get asked.

Where do we start?

Spend analysis. Without it, category prioritisation is guesswork and savings targets are arbitrary.

Do we need a procurement platform?

At sufficient transaction volume it helps considerably. Below that, better process and a well-configured ERP procurement module often do more per pound spent.

How do you stop people buying around the process?

By making the compliant route genuinely faster. Enforcement alone reliably loses to convenience.

Are savings guaranteed?

No, and we would be wary of anyone who says otherwise. What we can commit to is a method, a baseline, and transparent tracking to the ledger.

Enterprise Transformation

Related services.

Finance transformationReshaping how finance operates, not just which system it operates in.Supply-chain operationsPlanning, inventory and fulfilment that hold up when demand does not behave.Process automationRemoving manual steps where it pays, and saying so where it does not.Operating-model designHow work, decisions and accountability are arranged once the technology changes.
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