Strategically Align Yourself to the Highest Impact Categories

Part 3: Largest Categories & Staffing Models

If you are in the world of procurement or sourcing, your longevity will be based on your strategic alignment to the most important categories of spend to a business. So what categories dominate spend and require specialized attention? Unsurprisingly Information Technology is often the LARGEST category with the biggest teams associated with them. Logistics and Transportation is the next up, followed by Raw Materials and Professional Services. 

Those at the top of these categories are called Category Managers. They handle the strategic sourcing, supplier negotiations, and risk management for high-value categories. Buyers focus on transactional purchasing for smaller and less complex categories. Purchasing will generally handle the requirements of the business unit leaders and employees to keep up with their requests within an assigned category. 

High-impact categories often require collaboration with finance, operations, and legal teams. They are high visibility and extremely important to company leaders, often requiring Quarterly Businesses Review updates on the state of the category. 

If I were going for a Category Manager position, I’d be pushing for the ones with the largest visibility or the most critical to the business. Technology will have the most attention as well as the raw material imperative to drive revenue for the company. If you want to be the hero of the sourcing department and the one most likely to get the highest bonus potential for savings- focus on these categories! 

If you still don’t have a place to manage all of this work, check out SourceSight.io today!