The world in general and business in particular, is getting more and more complex. Both private and public sector organisations are re-shaping by outsourcing, forming partnerships, collaborating in joint ventures and going back to the basics of what made them a success in the first place.

Add to this the ever-increasing levels of expectation from customers and citizens in terms of the products and services they expect to receive, their quality and their price and you have a situation in which making a profit or keeping within budget is extremely difficult.

What this means for the procurement community is that you can no longer (if you ever could) work in isolation from the rest of your organisation and the people it serves. Asking you to get price reductions every year is increasingly a futile task.

What you need to achieve is a breakthrough in both supply costs and service if your organisation is going to continue to prosper. This needs a strategy for how you source things ... a strategy that has been developed and agreed by all the major players in the design, delivery and use of the goods and services you buy. In other words … a Category Strategy.