A practical framework for redesigning your procurement function around four layers of capacity, so a smaller permanent team can cover more spend, manage more risk and win the argument with finance.
Part of the SmartBuyer Procurement Guide Series.
Almost every procurement leader is being asked for the same three things at once: cover more spend, manage more risk and do it without more people. Most functions respond by running the same operating model with fewer people in it. Nothing is formally dropped, so everything degrades a little, and the failure surfaces months later as a missed renewal, an unmanaged supplier risk or a resignation.
This guide starts from the opposite place. If you were designing your function today, knowing that some work will be automated, some needs depth you cannot afford to employ full time and headcount growth is not coming, what would you build? It gives you a way to segment the work, match each type to the right capacity, price the options honestly and make the case in the language a finance director actually responds to.
If any of these describe you, this guide will earn back its 15 minutes.
Seven steps, from measuring what your team actually does to proving the new model works.
This guide draws on how senior procurement specialists design and run operating models across SmartBuyer’s Fractional Procurement Network, and on published benchmarking from The Hackett Group and Deloitte. It is written to be used, with templates for the exercises, a checklist to sense-check your redesign and a message from SmartBuyer’s founder, Mark Coulson.
