The Missing Muscle in Change
Management: Procurement

If you’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting the Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California, you’ll appreciate that it’s a magnificent catastrophe of a home. Conceived by media baron William Randolf Hearst, construction began in 1919 and, 165 rooms later, ceased in 1947, unfinished. It’s a dazzling hodgepodge of different architectural styles and finishes that became so unwieldy, foreboding, and expensive that Hearst packed up and left for a simpler life in Los Angeles.

The Hearst Castle is not unlike a corporation. It started out with a simple purpose, but somehow became lost in its own growth and lack of a master plan. New pieces were added, often at the whim and changing tastes of Hearst, resulting in a big, beautiful mess.

Procurement is often a casualty of corporate growth. Systems which may have ideally suited a company five or ten years ago are now disjointed and arcane. Spend under management is dispersed and decentralized across the organization, and a strategic procurement plan somehow got lost. Many times, the right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing, and the result is missed opportunities, both commercially and operationally. Without strategic spend management, the abilities to drive substantial savings and measurable process improvements are lost.

But what if your company had resources and insights across industries to inform your procurement strategy and make deliberate sourcing decisions? Imagine using cross-industry benchmarks and dedicated procurement expertise to better manage your indirect expenses. Right hand, please meet the left.

Procurement’s Overlooked Role in Change Adoption

Procurement frequently drives the most meaningful and sustained changes in the business from supplier transitions and process redesign to operational change management and technology enablement. However, procurement is rarely positioned and integrated as a core part of the change leadership conversation.

Change doesn’t fail because of strategy; it fails because of poor adoption. The key to success in business process redesign is to partner through critical change management initiatives, gain consensus across the business, and build a strong coalition based on collaboration, transparency, and trust. This positions procurement as a powerful leader and enabler of change, not simply a support function.

Successful change management involves strategically guiding individuals, teams, or entire organizations through transitions. This requires a proactive approach, clear communication, and focus on stakeholder engagement to foster buy-in and minimize resistance. In fact, when done right, change management initiatives can reduce costs by 10-15%. Change management is more than implementing new systems or processes; it is about helping people adapt and thrive in a new environment.

Key steps for change management include:

• Identify what is missing in the current environment
• Create awareness & urgency
• Articulate the reason for the change and the benefits it will bring
• Establish clear goals and metrics that define success
• Gain consensus and foster collaboration
• Build a roadmap with clearly defined roles
• Develop and implement the change

AI adoption is an excellent example. This technology is undeniably powerful, but its impact only shows up when organizations use it well. Procurement plays a critical role in this process, aligning stakeholders, scoping the right-fit solution, and selecting suppliers that can guide adoption as much as delivery.

In several recent client projects, including creative automation and knowledge work augmentation, the real differentiator wasn’t just the platform; it was how the sourcing strategy anticipated adoption and helped internal teams move more efficiently. We are talking operational transformation.

Organizations that structure procurement to accelerate adoption consistently see faster time-to-value, stronger ROI from transformation initiatives, and less internal drag across high-stakes changes.

Five Levers for Change Management: Proper Category Management, Spend Centralization, Process Optimization, Spend & Usage Optimization, Distribution Network Redesign, Operational Frequency Optimization

1. Price Optimization Through Proper Category Management

Our client’s marketing department had long sourced promotional merchandise through entrenched vendor relationships, without formal procurement involvement. Procurement introduced structured category management, competitive sourcing, and supplier segmentation, delivering millions in savings while enabling the business to lock in promotional calendars with real-time agility. The change stuck not through policy, but through financial impact, value-added services, improved service levels, and a structured vendor ecosystem that gave the business flexibility and control to plan and respond efficiently.

2.  Supplier Influence as a Change Messenger

During a post-merger transformation, a utility company transitioned from waterfall to agile delivery. Procurement, finance, and human resources collaborated with the selected training partner not just on commercial terms, but on co-delivering the messaging, rollout, and adoption framework. The result: improved delivery speed, real-time feedback loops, and material cost savings. The supplier relationship became a conduit for change, not just an expense line.

3. Internal Alignment as a Repeatable Discipline

A procurement team noticed P2P compliance lagging among occasional users. Instead of tightening enforcement, they launched Supply Chain Connect, a help desk that met users where they were, increased satisfaction, and raised sourcing discipline. Change was accelerated through structure, accessibility, and internal empathy.

4. Spend & Usage Improvement Through IT License Optimization

Managing IT software licenses is more complex than managing perpetual licenses. Today, nearly all functions have at least some SaaS spend in their area that IT may not have visibility into. The proactive management of this spend can allow organizations to have more visibility into their spend and plan for challenges, including security, support, and legal issues, where a process may not have been followed. Decentralized IT license spend often results in paying for duplicate licenses or paying for licenses that are not being used at all. Software optimization audits, standardizing and monitoring usage where possible, will reduce or eliminate those redundant costs and drive immediate savings, both on license and maintenance costs.

5. E-commerce Network Redesign

This network redesign initiative included three levers of engagement:

• Direct Cost: Direct negotiation yields price reduction and the best cost supply chain. Negotiated mark-up reductions; decreased labor cost by reducing the number of SKUs per bin location; optimized supply chain; improved SLAs during the process.
• Process: Price management and production improvement. Improved process, proactive vs. active, drove efficiency by improving inventory/pallet location management, compliance, process standardization, and LEAN efficiencies.
• Strategic Impact: Reduction in total cost of ownership through supplier-enabled innovation creates technology, process, performance, and tracking and reporting improvements.
• Cash Management (Example: armored car transport): To address inflationary cost increases in armored car services due to higher freight costs and higher labor costs, we have focused on streamlining routing and pickup frequency to overall reduce the cost. By running an analysis for pick up frequency per location and addressing/reducing pick up frequency accordingly, we reduced overall costs.

Change doesn’t require a wrecking ball. It requires vision, fortitude, and a realization of where your expertise lies, and most importantly, where it doesn’t. Change management initiatives are extremely important for the health of a company. When done right, it can significantly improve process, efficiency, work satisfaction, safety, speed to market, higher revenue, and significant cost savings.

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