What’s on the chopping block? – The Impact of COVID on Procurement

COVID-19 had all sorts of impact on procurement functions across the country. We surveyed 202 organisations in 2020 to understand how procurement functions reacted.

While cost savings initially dropped off the radar and were overtaken by supply risk mitigations, by September 2020, 29% of private sector organisations said that their top priority was again savings. Even 21% of public sector respondents said so in July 2020.

So where will all these savings come from to make Australian organisations come out of the other end of the recession? What part of their spend is on the chopping block?

Here are the top categories and how much our study participants expect to save on average:

Table 1: Savings to be realised, by category

 

No surprise that most organisations expect savings in travel (40%!), fleet (12%) and facilities maintenance (11%). What is striking is that professional services are to be expected to contribute significantly. Contractors, Management Consultants and Marketing Services will be slashed by between 11% and 16%. Longer term investments into construction and IT will also be reduced, albeit at a lower rate of between 5% and 9%.

To learn more about how organisations will realise these savings, download our ebook.

eBook Hitting the Reset Button

Hitting the Reset Button
Setting up Australian Procurement Teams for the post pandemic world: What does ‘good’ look like?

Do you know if your procurement team is set up right?

Grosvenor has undertaken annual research into the state of the Australian procurement profession over the past ten years. This year we focused on what the typical Procurement Team setup is and how this contrasts to better practice.

What's inside?

  • Top priorities of procurement teams right now
  • Expected top challenges for the next 12months The most common procurement centralisation model Benchmarks of procurement teams including spend and staffing The most common length of time for a procurement
  • Detailed benchmarks for various procurement team sizes
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