10 Collaboration Commandments for Procurement Teams
Procurement leaders are under constant pressure to deliver measurable value—cost savings, supply resilience, compliance, ESG requirements, and better stakeholder experience—often with lean teams and limited time. That’s why many large corporates rely on external providers: independent procurement experts, interim managers, specialist boutiques, and consulting teams.
But the market is noisy. Alongside seasoned professionals, there are plenty of “overnight experts” offering generic playbooks, inflated claims, and little accountability. The result? Procurement departments waste time onboarding the wrong profiles, stakeholders lose trust, and the external-support model gets unfairly blamed.
The fix isn’t to avoid external partners, it’s to collaborate better and set the engagement up for success from day one.
Across corporate procurement programs, success is typically judged through three lenses:
- Intensity of collaboration: Do stakeholders feel the external expert is truly engaged and driving progress?
- Expertise: Is the support clearly bringing skill, market knowledge, and procurement craft that the team needs?
- Common vision: Are both sides aligned on what “good” looks like—and how to get there?
Here are 10 practical “Collaboration Commandments” procurement leaders and external providers can use to avoid misunderstandings, accelerate results, and build long-term value.
The 10 Collaboration Commandments
1) Know the business behind the spend
External support fails when it treats procurement like a standalone function. In reality, spend reflects how the business operates.
What great looks like:
- Providers arrive having reviewed the company’s footprint, operating model, categories, and industry dynamics.
- Procurement shares context early: business priorities, stakeholder map, constraints, and “sacred cows.”
- The first working sessions focus on pain points and decision reality, not just data requests.
Procurement tip: Share a short “procurement truth deck” (current targets, category maturity, key stakeholders, tooling, governance).
Provider tip: Come in with hypotheses, not conclusions—validate quickly.
2) Speak the stakeholder’s language, not just procurement
Procurement has its own vocabulary, but internal stakeholders care about outcomes such as speed, continuity, quality, risk reduction, and customer impact. External providers should translate procurement work into business value that resonates with budget holders, operations leaders, legal, and finance. Procurement should position external support as a partner that helps stakeholders succeed, not as “procurement police.” Tone and format matter too. A board update is not a category workshop, and a plant manager will not engage with a methodology-heavy deck that ignores operational reality.
3) Grasp the end-goal and define success
In procurement, “success” can mean hard savings, cost avoidance, risk reduction, supplier consolidation, cycle-time reduction, compliance improvement, ESG uplift, or capability building. Misalignment here is the most common reason an engagement feels disappointing, even when a lot of work is happening. The collaboration should start with a shared definition of value, including what counts as savings and when it is recognised. Clear KPIs, baselines, and a tracking cadence prevent debates later. Most importantly, both sides need a prioritised backlog that makes it obvious what matters now and what can wait.
4) Listen before diagnosing
Procurement and stakeholders often already know what is broken. What they struggle with is fixing it due to lack of bandwidth, internal politics, unclear ownership, inconsistent data, or an absence of decision rights. External providers should begin with structured listening across procurement, budget owners, legal, finance, and operations. Procurement should create the conditions for honest input without fear of blame. A good diagnosis in procurement is rarely just about price. It typically reveals governance gaps, incentive misalignment, weak specifications, fragmented demand, or supplier power. Listening first saves weeks of rework.
5) Meet in the middle so change is adopted
Large corporates do not resist change because they are irrational. They resist because complexity is real: systems, approval gates, regulatory requirements, legacy relationships, and competing priorities. Providers should offer options with trade-offs, not a single “perfect” recommendation that ignores constraints. Procurement should co-design implementation with stakeholders so the plan respects operational reality while still moving the needle. In procurement, adoption beats elegance every time. A solution that is slightly less ambitious but actually implemented will outperform a brilliant plan that never leaves PowerPoint.
6) Earn influence with humility
External experts are often hired for credibility, but credibility disappears quickly when the provider behaves as though the business is simple or internal teams are “behind.” Providers should treat operational expertise with respect and recognise that institutional knowledge is a strategic asset. Procurement can set the tone by reinforcing that the provider is here to help the organisation win, not to “fix” people. Decisions must remain owned by the business, with the provider enabling faster, better decisions through analysis, facilitation, and targeted expertise.
7) Avoid cookie-cutter templates
Procurement has proven levers, but every company’s maturity, culture, and constraints differ. Experienced providers use methodology as a starting point, not a cage. Procurement teams help by being transparent about what has already been tried and what failed. Strong collaborations build modular approaches: test a minimum viable change that proves impact, then scale. That might mean starting with one sub-category, one region, or one stakeholder group to establish credibility before expanding.
8) Don’t make promises procurement can’t cash
Nothing damages trust faster than unrealistic savings claims or timelines, especially when finance later challenges the numbers. Providers should use conservative, evidence-backed value estimates and communicate confidence ranges rather than headlines. Procurement should align early with finance on the savings logic and how benefits will be validated. Timelines should reflect reality: sourcing cycles, contract terms, stakeholder availability, and implementation lead times. In corporate procurement, credibility is a currency. Once it is spent, it is hard to earn back.
9) Keep momentum visible without creating theatre
Stakeholders judge collaboration intensity partly by what they can see: progress, responsiveness, and decision-making. Visibility should be meaningful, not performative. A simple rhythm helps: regular progress updates anchored to KPIs and decisions needed, a clear workplan with ownership, and fast escalation paths when governance blocks progress. Momentum is not created by more meetings; it is created by decision velocity and disciplined follow-through.
10) Follow through after implementation and transfer capability
A common corporate complaint is that the provider delivers a strategy deck, disappears, and the organisation struggles to sustain change. Strong engagements bake sustainability into the work: knowledge transfer, playbooks, templates, stakeholder messaging, and practical training. A post-implementation check-in helps confirm benefits are being realised and allows both sides to capture lessons learned for future categories, regions, or suppliers. This is where external support shifts from short-term delivery to long-term capability building.
Procurement does not need “a consultant.” It needs the right expertise for the specific challenge, whether that is category strategy, should-cost modelling, supplier negotiations, procurement transformation, SRM, risk management, procurement technology selection, or interim leadership. Working through a vetted network reduces noise and improves match quality, so procurement leaders spend less time screening profiles and more time delivering outcomes.
When procurement teams and external providers align on vision, demonstrate expertise, and maintain visible collaboration intensity, partnerships become faster, smoother, and more valuable. Done well, external support is not an expense. It is a force multiplier for procurement performance.
on a weekly basis.
