Procurement Transformation at a European media company

Solution implemented

Future Purchasing completed a procurement diagnostic to understand the key issues to be addressed and also to identify potential savings for the business. In order to establish the current situation and identify opportunities for improvement, more than 100 stakeholders and procurement team members were interviewed.

Diagnostic

The diagnostic categorised the £1bn procurement spend at a high level and identified that procurement was only managing 45% of it.

Annualised benefits of €41-€61m were identified for delivery over the first two years of programme. Other improvement opportunities were also identified across a range of enablers including strategy and operating model.

Transformation

A transformation programme was created with a total of 17 workstreams to capture identified savings and drive structural changes, including:

• a new operating model and organisational structures at the Group/BU level, and new approaches to category governance and recruitment
• category strategies in over 20 Wave 1 spend areas including content, marketing and technology
• implementation plans for delivery of benefits in Wave 1 categories plus plans to move on to Wave 2.

Benefits delivered

We developed a single framework for category management that was flexibly applied to all spend. Cross functional collaboration between colleagues across functions, BUs and geographies was introduced.

We significantly improved the procurement skills of the procurement team through training and the recruitment of highly skilled and dedicated procurement talent. This raised the profile and demonstrated the value of procurement with the executive team.

The detailed spend analysis for all BUs and the applied professionalism and rigour of programme management was key to delivering the transformation programme.

In-year benefits of €20m were delivered in year 1.

Comments from the Chief Financial Officer

“We looked at several major consultancies and chose Future Purchasing because of the excellent quality and customer service levels of the people in the team. The Transformation team built a vision for us that inspired our Executive Management Group, and we embarked on a three-year programme of change. Future Purchasing were ambitious for us, and they strove to accommodate cultural and business unit differences to secure ongoing and sustainable results. The team blended the delivery of programme management frameworks and processes with coaching and mentoring of internal team members with skill, operating at all levels within the organisation. Most importantly I felt Future Purchasing cared deeply about the outcome, as if they were a member of our internal team. This is what I felt sets them apart.”