Profit from Procurement

8NON-SAVINGS PRIORITIES: Balancing Your Objectives

Is There More to Procurement than Savings?

Throughout this book, we have talked about the importance of savings in Procurement. Many of the chapters are dedicated to this topic, whether it's sourcing execution, measuring savings, or how to set your operating model and team up to achieve them. But should Procurement have targets that transcend the savings goals that have been the focus so far? How much territory and remit should Procurement realistically aspire to?

Well, in the second chapter of this book (Ambition), we made our views clear that we think Procurement should ensure it builds its credibility first through delivering savings to the business and deploying commercial rigor. However, we also made the point, and indeed offered some case studies, on Procurement functions that were thinking and acting outside of this remit having already established their savings credibility, for example supporting product development. Going beyond savings is definitely something that mature Procurement functions can aspire to.

But what is the exhaustive list of all these non-savings goals for companies that have already proved they can deliver year-on-year savings? We need to be clear at this point. While we believe there are many non-savings goals, that does not mean they should have no financial value, or even little financial value. In the private sphere at least, companies exist to be profitable and can go about that however they ...