Untangling Complex Spend

The global annual spend on complex professional services (covering a broad variety of services, including accounting, advertising and marketing, architecture and design, clinical research, consulting, engineering, financial advisory, legal, and tax) is now in excess of $1.5trn. Notwithstanding its size and importance, this segment remains largely unaddressed by many procurement organizations; buying is largely decentralized, managed by relatively senior executives who rely on a handful of trusted advisors to help them with high-value, high-risk business problems for which they see little reason to seek procurement assistance.

Here, we discuss the challenges posed by complex professional services spend and offer some suggestions for how to make maximize value in those categories.