Category management
Category management is the difference between buying well once and buying well every time. It is also the discipline most often announced and least often actually implemented.
The problem this solves
Categories are inherited from how the organisation is structured rather than from how the market sells. Spend that a supplier sees as one relationship is split across three internal owners, so the organisation negotiates against itself.
Category strategies are written as documents and filed. They contain market commentary but no decisions, no targets and no named owner, so nothing changes after the deck is presented.
The category manager role exists on the org chart but the person in it spends most of their week processing transactions, which is the reliable way to ensure no category is ever actually managed.
What we actually do
The steps, in the order we run them.
Segment the categories properly
We build the taxonomy from how the supply market is organised and how you actually buy, then position each category on value and supply risk so the level of effort matches what the category can return.
Understand the supply market
Market structure, capacity, cost drivers, concentration and where the balance of power genuinely sits. Cost drivers matter most: knowing what moves a supplier's cost base is what makes a negotiation something other than a request for a discount.
Build the strategy
For each priority category: the sourcing approach, the supplier base you want in three years, the commercial model, the levers you will pull and in what order, with a target and a named owner.
Execute against a pipeline
Strategies become a sequenced pipeline of sourcing events, renegotiations and demand interventions, with dates and accountability, so the plan produces transactions rather than intentions.
Govern and refresh
Quarterly reviews against target, and an annual refresh, because a category strategy written against a market that has since consolidated is worse than none at all.
What you get
- A category taxonomy built from the supply market and your operating model
- Category positioning by value and supply risk, with effort matched to return
- Written strategies for priority categories, each with targets and a named owner
- A sequenced execution pipeline with dates and accountability
- A governance rhythm and refresh cycle your team runs after we leave
Categories that have never been managed as categories typically deliver 10 to 25 per cent on first pass, and the durable gain is the second cycle: a team that knows its market well enough to see the next move before the supplier does.
Questions we get asked
How many categories should we actively manage?
Fewer than you think. Most organisations get the bulk of the available value from the ten to fifteen categories that carry the majority of addressable spend. Spreading category management across everything produces documents rather than results.
What is the difference between category management and strategic sourcing?
Strategic sourcing is an event: you run a process and award a contract. Category management is the ongoing discipline that decides which events to run, when, and why. Sourcing without category management produces good individual deals with no coherent direction.
Can our team run this after you leave?
That is the intent, and it is the main reason we build strategies with your category owners rather than for them. We stay through the first cycle of each priority category, because the second one is where the capability either holds or does not.
Our category managers spend all day on transactions. Does this change that?
It has to, or nothing else works. Freeing category owner time is usually a prerequisite rather than a benefit, and it typically comes from the process and automation work rather than from asking people to try harder.
Where to start
Run the free procurement maturity diagnostic for a scored view of where the gaps are, or talk to a consultant about this specific problem. Both take less time than a meeting about having a meeting.
Talk to a consultant