TL;DR
- Procurement controls the lion's share of company spend. Why, then, are we often handed a budget number instead of being asked to help set one?
- As a rule of thumb, the earlier procurement gets involved, the more value we can bring.
- Budgets tend to form around headcount and department requests, not category spend, and finance often sees procurement as executing decisions rather than shaping them.
- Excluding procurement means budgets get built on outdated unit pricing, duplicate supplier requests slip through, and renewal timing gets missed until it's a mid-year surprise.
- Earning a seat means showing up before being asked: bring category spend analysis and a quantified example of what a past decision cost without procurement's input.
- An impressive shift in spend, like the 18 to 22% average savings a GPO can deliver, is the kind of concrete number that gets procurement invited back next cycle.
Budget season is upon us! Between September and October, an excitable finance department will meet with hat-in-hand department heads to flesh out numbers for 2027. But despite being the team that controls the lion’s share of where company money is spent, procurement is often left out of the conversation until the time comes to hand us a number.
Why aren’t we asked for a number, instead?
The Elusive Seat at the Table
The answer to the question of why procurement doesn’t have a seat at the table usually involves musings on people not understanding the value of procurement, or (still) regarding the function as essentially “back-office” and non-strategic. The industry has been talking about this for several years, but there are other reasons worth knowing about:
- Budgets are not built around category spend. Instead, they’re shaped around headcount and requests coming from influential department heads.
- Finance teams tend to see procurement as executors, rather than shapers of decisions.
What Organizations are Missing Out on By Excluding Procurement
Several missed opportunities flow from procurement not being in the room:
- Procurement misses the chance to present ourselves as proactive and forward-looking. As a rule of thumb, the earlier procurement can get involved, the more value we can bring.
- Budgets are built on unsophisticated (and possibly outdated) unit pricing.
- Heads of department put in requests for products, services, or specific suppliers that procurement might have consolidated (if we’d had the opportunity!)
- Despite having an excellent understanding of market pricing trends and business spend patterns, procurement doesn’t get the chance to flag market shifts or contract renewal opportunities before a figure is locked in.
- Cost savings could have helped shape the budget, instead of just being reported against it.
How Procurement Can Earn an Invitation to Budget Meetings
Don’t wait for an invitation. To make sure spend is on the agenda, you’ll need to bring data to the table without being asked. We’re not suggesting you burst uninvited into the executive budget meeting (!) but do get in touch with the key players in the lead-up to help ensure spend is firmly on the agenda. You might share strategic category spend analyses, upcoming renewals for strategic supplier contracts, or market pricing shifts that decision makers need to know about.
Getting a seat at the budget table usually happens in stages:
- Start building the case months before budget season rather than scrambling once it arrives, so the analysis is ready well before anyone's asking for it.
- Bring one small, proven win to the table first. A single well-documented example of a decision that would have gone differently with procurement's input does more to open the door than a general pitch about strategic value ever will.
- Once you're in the room, follow up afterward with a short note showing what the data actually changed, whether that's a number that moved or a duplicate purchase that got caught. That follow-up is often what turns a one-off invitation into a standing one next cycle.
If procurement was excluded from this same conversation last year, you might have an opportunity to quantify the costs of decisions made without your input. Perhaps (for example), a department head was given a budget last year for a new project management tool.
What procurement knows (but wasn’t present to share) is that this vendor raises prices 15% at renewal, and that IT is already paying for a near-identical tool in another department. Multiply the tool’s per-seat cost by 40 new hires the department is planning to add, and the budget was set $18,000 higher than it needed to be. If someone from procurement had been there, they could have flagged the tool as a duplicate.
In another example, a department might budget flat travel costs based on last year's airline contract, with no clue that the carrier is raising rates 12% at renewal, and no idea procurement already has a competing bid on the table that would hold pricing steady. Multiply that gap across every trip the department books next year, and the number gets large fast, all because the two teams with the relevant information never sat in the same room.
What Changes Once Procurement is Actually in the Room
With procurement present, budget numbers start from real pricing rather than last year's assumptions because renewals, market shifts, and vendor changes are already known before the figure gets locked in. Department requests get consolidated before they're submitted, and contract renewals get timed against the budget cycle instead of landing as a surprise mid-year variance that nobody planned for.
Note that none of this requires procurement to run the meeting. We just need to turn up with the numbers finance and department heads don't otherwise have.
Bring Real Numbers to Your Next Budget Conversation
Avoid vague promises of “we could get a better deal” by bringing real numbers to any conversation about the budget. A great place to start is to show how much a group purchasing organization (GPO) like Una could shave from the bottom line, saving an average of 18% to 22% annually on indirect spending categories by leveraging collective buying power.
In a forum where every percentage point matters, this is exactly the kind of proposal that will make the CFO, the finance team, and other department heads sit up, take notice, and never fail to invite procurement to budget season discussions again.
Ready to prep for budget season? Contact our team to learn how group purchasing can work to save you more money, time, and effort.
