Avoiding the Pitfalls of Centralised Procurement: 18 Reasons why procurement cost-saving initiatives fail to deliver to the bottom line

This article is an update to an earlier article – the fifth in a series on how to avoid the pitfalls of centralised procurement.

In the first article I commented on the reasons why, when many large organisations embark on centralised procurement initiatives with the promise of substantial savings, direct increases in profitability fail to materialize within the business units. A discussion to capture the views of other procurement professionals has been running at Procurement Professionals Group on LinkedIn.

This week I re-analyze the comments – 311 at time of writing this article – fromĀ 118 contributors, excluding myself. Continue reading

Is your Procurement initiative really a cost saver? – The 8 questions to ask.

Today I ask, “How are you to know that your procurement ‘cost saving’ initiative will not deliver to the bottom line?

Regular readers of my blog will know that, recently, I wrote a series of articles on the reasons why, when many large organisations embark on centralised procurement initiatives with the promise of substantial savings, direct increases in profitability fail to materialize within the business units. Continue reading