Procurement plan
The plan is the year in front of you. Which categories get sourced, in what order, by whom, against what target, and which renewals have to start now because the notice period says so.
The problem this solves
The annual plan is a list of tenders with no running order. Everything is scheduled for the first quarter because that is when the appetite is, and by March the team is running four events at once and doing none of them properly.
Contract renewals drive the year by accident. Nobody holds the expiry calendar, so renegotiations start weeks before expiry with no alternative in play, which is the reliable way to accept the incumbent's terms.
The savings target is set top down, as a percentage the finance director needs, with no pipeline underneath it. The team spends the year explaining why it is behind on a number nobody ever traced to a real category.
What we actually do
The steps, in the order we run them.
Build the renewal calendar
Every contract with its expiry, notice period and auto-renewal clause, worked backwards so a renegotiation starts when it still has leverage. This alone reorders most annual plans, because the dates are not negotiable and the rest is.
Size the addressable pipeline
Which categories are genuinely in play this year, with an estimated value and effort for each, based on spend and contract position rather than on who has been asking loudest.
Sequence the year
Events are ordered by value, effort, dependency and the calendar, then spread across the year against the capacity that actually exists. A plan that assumes a team twice your size is a forecast of failure.
Resource it honestly
Who runs each event, where you are short, and what gets deferred or supported externally. The deferral decision made in January is far cheaper than the one made in August.
Set targets bottom up and a reporting rhythm
The savings target is the sum of the pipeline, not a percentage handed down. Monthly tracking against it, with the methodology agreed with finance before the year starts.
What you get
- A twelve-month sourcing pipeline, sequenced, with owners and dates
- A contract renewal calendar worked back from notice periods
- A resourcing view showing where the plan exceeds the team you have
- A savings target built from the pipeline and agreed with finance
- A monthly reporting pack and governance rhythm your team runs
The renewal calendar is the least glamorous part of this and reliably the most valuable. The renewals that lose money are the ones that were never opened, and they are lost on a date rather than in a negotiation.
Questions we get asked
How is this different from a procurement strategy?
The strategy decides what procurement is for over three to five years. The plan decides what it does in the next twelve months. If you take only one, take the strategy, because a well-executed plan pointed in the wrong direction is an expensive way to go nowhere.
Should the plan be annual or rolling?
Set annually to match the budget cycle, reviewed quarterly and re-sequenced as reality intervenes. A plan nobody has re-sequenced by month four was either extraordinarily well judged or is being quietly ignored.
We have no reliable spend baseline. Can we still plan?
You can, but the plan will be built on the contract register rather than on spend, which misses everything bought without one. In that situation a spend analysis first usually pays for itself inside the same year, and we would say so rather than sell you a plan built on partial data.
Who owns the plan after you leave?
Your head of procurement, with named category owners against each line. We build it with them rather than for them, and the monthly pack is designed to be run by your team in under an hour.
Our team is too small for the pipeline. What then?
That is a finding, and a useful one. The plan shows explicitly where demand exceeds capacity, which turns a vague complaint about being stretched into a specific case for either deferring categories or funding support. Both are decisions the business can act on.
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 consultantOther services
- Procurement strategy
- Spend analysis
- Strategic sourcing
- Supplier management
- Contract management
- Compliance and process
- Process improvement
- Procurement technology
- Risk management
- Category management
- RFP and tender development
- Supplier diversity
- Sustainability initiatives
- Training and development
- Procurement advisory
- Implementation
- Ongoing support
- AI tools