Support

Within indirect procurement there are hundreds of categories, all of which require deep knowledge to procure effectively.  There are thousands of stakeholders, all with knowledge about their area but who need Procurement’s support.  There are tens-of-thousands of suppliers, all who invest heavily in selling to you – for large contracts it is not unusual for a supplier’s account management team to be larger than the entire Procurement function it is selling to. 

All of this means that Procurement functions have a requirement for a huge variety of skillsets.  Skillsets such as category expertise, change management, stakeholder engagement from senior executives down, facilitation, negotiation, supplier management, data analysis, technological know-how, etc. – and so the list goes on.

And to make matters even worse, indeed insurmountable, unlike direct (or core) procurement, the skill sets required to effectively manage indirects successfully change from one week to the next. As you can see in the below comparison, you can see that indirects require a fundamentally different approach to directs. 


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The odds therefore are heavily stacked against internal functions being able to consistently meet an organisation’s needs. Partnering with Proxima provides organisations with a simple and effective solution to this seemingly impossible challenge.  
 

Some examples of the types of projects procurement functions engage with us to run are as follows:
 

• Transformation programmes
• Savings implementation programmes
• Organisation design
• Pre merger due diligence
• Post merger integration
• Innovative spend analysis
• P2P sourcing and implementation
• ‘100 day savings’ campaigns – a highly targeted short term cash hunt