In today’s climate of volatility and global disruption, business leaders who prioritize procurement can achieve significant competitive advantage. Our procurement consulting experts help clients establish efficient operating models—powered by AI and analytics—to beat inflation, meet sustainability standards, strengthen supply chain resilience, and more.
With hundreds of procurement projects completed across industries and geographies over the past five years, BCG’s procurement consulting experts know how best to help companies chart a course to buying differently—and in a better way. They blend deep sector-specific knowledge with expertise in procurement best practices—both traditional and new—as well as digital transformation.
Building relationships remains important to sourcing and procurement, but personal experience must be balanced with a rules-based process that uses digitization—such as AI-powered and analytical solutions—to speed up outcomes and reduce costs. Creating value requires enablers and a strong data foundation. To implement an effective digital procurement strategy and take full advantage of the opportunities that digital offers, BCG helps sourcing and procurement leaders define the core value that their function brings to the organization.
To identify the investments needed to create value, through increased savings, quality, speed, innovation, sustainability, and risk mitigation, we examine your organization’s strategic priorities and assess its digital maturity, including opportunities to unlock approaches that combine AI, technology, and human capabilities.
Using our extensive library of client use cases to speed our work—and tapping into the complementary capabilities of INVERTO, a BCG specialty business that focuses on procurement and supply chain management—we then select and run use cases that match your specific needs. The results help pinpoint technology interdependencies and anticipated pain points, which in turn helps shape your custom digital roadmap. To turn that roadmap into reality, we work with BCG X to develop and deploy user-centric digital solutions, address users’ needs, and help generate value.
Savings
For a German bank looking to achieve near- and long-term savings in procurement spending, we used commercial and technical levers yielding an immediate 12% savings. By optimizing the target operating model, we developed 20 additional initiatives in governance, procurement mandate, savings tracking, and other areas.
Operating Model Redesign
For a large energy player, we conducted a full procurement optimization program that included the design of a new, center-led operating model. The work covered key processes and a capability-building program for teams, generating savings of 10% of addressable spending.
Sustainability
Our strategy for CO2 reduction at a European automotive OEM emphasized procurement practices, focusing on Scope 3 emissions under the Paris Agreement as the basis for new CO2 targets. We then outlined the required measures—including timing and cost—and laid out intermediate and long-term milestones.
Digital Transformation
We partnered with an international oil and gas company in Asia to create a roadmap for its digital procurement transformation. After completing our digital maturity review, we identified 11 use cases across strategic and operational procurement, prioritized efforts, and produced a detailed schedule for year-one digital implementations.
Change management is critical to ensuring that procurement becomes a source of competitive advantage. It is integral to almost all of our procurement projects. To ensure that results are swift and sustainable, we work side by side with your teams so that they are clear on what procurement achieves in savings, sustainability, and competitive advantage. We are here to answer questions, integrate team-specific needs, and overcome pain points.
Suppliers must comply with comprehensive environmental, social, and governance (ESG) legislation and directives. But meeting requirements isn’t enough. Leading companies across industries are already pushing beyond mere compliance, and are working to CO2-positive supply chains and socially responsible procurement. To deliver value through sustainable operations, our procurement consulting team supports companies in:
To succeed in challenging times, CEOs must do the seemingly impossible: capture cost savings while achieving additional competitive advantages, including innovation, sustainability, and resilience. CEOs can do all of this by taking what may seem like a surprising step: empowering their procurement function to liberate new value from their top supplier relationships.
Learn MoreHow do companies elevate procurement from an administrative operation to a generator of strategic value? BCG's Wolfgang Schnellbächer discusses unlocking profit through digitization of the procurement function.
To support their company’s strategic decisions, procurement leaders should monitor a wide variety of trends that affect supply availability and costs.
A major international initiative aims to cut carbon emissions by guaranteeing demand for new breakthrough technologies in hard-to-abate industries such as steel, transportation, and concrete.
In today’s world, companies face constant crises. Leaders who put procurement at the core can help their companies to not only respond to challenges but achieve phenomenal sources of competitive advantage—by radically embedding artificial intelligence, making procurement bionic.
