Procurement practice
Most category strategies die in stakeholder review.
Ours are built to survive it. You can run them the week they land.
Who this is for
You own a savings number. We help you hit it.
CPOs, heads of procurement, and sourcing leaders at large enterprises. You call us when:
- The spend baseline is stale and nobody trusts the numbers.
- Major categories have no strategy, or a strategy nobody follows.
- A transformation stalled and the steering committee wants progress, not slides.
- You need senior sourcing muscle without a big-firm invoice or a big-firm timeline.
The method
The structure is standard. The delivery is not.
We use the category strategy structures the major firms use. The difference is what you hold at the end: a plan with numbers you can defend in front of your CFO.
Spend baseline
What you spend, with whom, on what. Cleaned and defensible.
Market dynamics
How the supply market is moving and what that does to your leverage.
Supplier landscape
Who serves you, who could, and where the concentration risk sits.
Demand levers
Consumption you can cut before you negotiate a single contract.
Supply levers
Sourcing moves: consolidation, competition, specification, geography.
Commercial levers
Pricing structures, terms, and contracts that hold their value.
Roadmap
Sequenced initiatives with owners, dates, and savings targets.
One rule governs every engagement. Every savings claim carries a baseline, a method, and a timeframe. Every benchmark carries a source and a date. No hand-waving.
How an engagement runs
The first week produces work, not a workplan.
We start with the spend baseline and a first category shortlist. From there, a weekly cadence: working sessions with your team, deliverables you keep, and a roadmap your organization can resource. When we leave, the plan still runs. That is the point.
Why us
Our principal built SAP's procurement software business. Now he sits on your side of the table.
Catapuult's principal, Chris Salis, was VP and General Manager of SAP's procurement software business. Responsible for building the product and selling it. That job was a running conversation with procurement leaders about what moves spend, what software fixes, and what it never will. Before SAP: Business Objects, eBay, Gap Inc., and Adecco. Enterprise scar tissue, earned in the seat.
Chris leads the engagement and owns the deliverable. The team behind him is how the work lands on time. Catapuult clients have included Nike, Block, and Intuit.
We also build procurement software between engagements. Spend analysis. Supplier management. Category management. Deployed at client companies, delivering advantages you can measure. Building them forces us to think the way an operator does: what gets used, not what demos well.
FAQ
Questions a careful buyer asks.
You ran the software business. Can you run my category?
Yes. And selling was only half the job. Chris ran SAP's procurement software business as VP and General Manager, responsible for the product and the revenue. That seat put him in the room where procurement decisions get made: who owns the number, what the steering committee kills, why tools get bought and never used. The method above is the work itself. Judge us on it, and on what the first week produces.
Why a boutique over Kearney or McKinsey?
The big firms are good. You also pay for a pyramid, and the partner who charmed you sells the next deal while juniors run yours. Here, the people you meet do the work. If you need an army, hire an army. At enterprise scale we fit three ways. One category strategy done right. A diagnostic your steering committee will believe. Or senior counsel to the CPO while your team and your big firm run the volume work.
What if you are unavailable?
We keep the client list short. That is what the referral habit protects. If we cannot start when you need us, you hear it in the first email, not after a proposal.
Two practices sounds like a lack of focus.
It is one discipline pointed at two buyers. Enterprises teach rigor at scale. Startups teach speed and shipping in weeks. Your transformation needs both.
What does startup work teach procurement?
Pace. Startup clients do not accept a six-month analysis phase. After working with them, neither do we. It also teaches product thinking, which is why our recommendations account for what your team will adopt.
Referred? Email [email protected] and name who sent you. Not referred? Write anyway. Maybe we can help.
Email [email protected]