Much has been written on the subject of procurement outsourcing in recent years, and the tide had appeared to be shifting inexorably in this direction, but in the last 12 months we have seen a considerable movement the other way – with many organisations that had experimented with outsourcing choosing to insource again.
A recent study published by the Everest Research Institute bears up this trend, highlighting the fact that fewer procurement outsourcing deals were struck in 2007. In the group’s Procurement Outsourcing Annual Report Katrina Menzigian, vice president, wrote “Buyers are able to ‘experiment’ with procurement outsourcing as they potentially migrate towards a full Source-to-Pay (S2P) strategy.”
“This phase-in approach is allowing the opportunity for testing of synergies, scaling up operations, developing industry-specific capability which, in turn, delivers better results and savings.”
Again, this very much bears out our experience of the market, where companies are leveraging technology to bring procurement efficiencies to bear internally, but also calling in external assistance as and where appropriate. This is especially the case where there is a shortfall in category expertise.
