The Structural Fix for Maverick Spend

Somewhere in your shared drive sits a cobwebbed procurement policy that took months to write, survived several rounds of review and was announced in a company wide email that most recipients skimmed and forgot. It says exactly which suppliers to use for office supplies, shipping and everything in between. 

Meanwhile, at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, a team member realizes the toner has run out before a big Monday meeting, finds a website with next-day delivery and pays with a company card. Nobody meant any harm, but the policy might as well not exist.

Why Maverick Spend Happens

Maverick spend, meaning purchases made outside your procurement guidelines, usually happens because the approved process is convoluted, and a few other causes sit alongside it:

• A convoluted process: If buying from a contracted supplier means finding the right form, waiting for two levels of approval and raising a purchase order for a box of toner, a person with a deadline will look for a quicker route, and a website with next day delivery is always one search away.
• Unawareness of contracts: People may not know which suppliers you already have under contract, so they buy from whoever they find first.
• Delivery gaps: An approved supplier may be unable to meet an urgent timeline, which pushes the buyer elsewhere.
• Coverage gaps: A contract may not cover the item someone needs, so the buyer has no compliant option to choose.

But maverick spend can be useful in terms of continuous improvement. Every off-contract purchase points to a spot where your process was harder than the alternative, so a pattern of stray purchases shows you where your procurement processes are not user-friendly. Reading that pattern gives you a map of what to simplify (far more valuable than a list of names to reprimand).

... and Why Reminders Do Not Fix It

Because maverick spend gets treated as a behavior problem, the standard remedies are more training, firmer reminders and tighter audits. These help at the margins, but they keep asking busy people to do extra work, and leave the convoluted process exactly where it was. When the approved route is slower than the workaround, the workaround wins nearly every time, however clear the policy is.

The costs pile up. Accounts payable spends extra time reconciling invoices that arrive with no matching purchase order, the chance of fraud rises when procurement is not overseeing the purchase, and your volume never accumulates with contracted suppliers, so the discounts you negotiated never appear in the numbers. 

What a Structural Fix Looks Like

A structural fix changes the buying environment so that the compliant purchase takes less effort than the rogue one. In practice that means contracts already in place before anyone needs them, a short list of suppliers in each category and clear instructions on how to buy from them. 

How a GPO Provides That Structure

A group purchasing organization like Una supplies that structure from day one. Una offers 2,500+ contracts pre-negotiated with top suppliers, so you can skip the RFP cycle and rapidly connect to suppliers in key indirect categories. 

Simply put, having a GPO relationship in place removes the need for your stakeholders to choose between suppliers. When a single supplier covers all office stationery, for example, that spend lands in one place instead of scattering across dozens of unapproved vendors.

Let’s return to the Friday afternoon toner. Through Una, members can access an Office Depot contract with savings of up to 80% off list price. The approved purchase costs less than the consumer website and takes about the same effort to place. Compliance stops depending on goodwill, because the easiest and cheapest route now happens to be the one your policy describes.

Una is completely free to members, with no minimum purchase requirements and no lock- ins, so you can start with the categories where maverick spend hurts most, such as office supplies or shipping, and add others as the results come in. 

Where a GPO Can’t Fix Maverick Spend On Its Own

We’d be overselling if we told you a GPO solves every case of maverick spend. A GPO may not offer every product your teams need, which means some purchases will always fall outside the portfolio. Urgent needs will sometimes outrun any supplier's delivery window, and a contract only changes behavior when buyers can reach it easily, so ordering tools, approval workflows and internal communication still matter. 

Some spend also belongs in strategic supplier relationships that you negotiate yourself. A GPO works best as a layer beneath those relationships, covering the indirect and tail categories that take up your team's time without differentiating your business.

When a gap does appear, treat it as useful information. Your sourcing advisor can tell you whether Una already holds a contract that covers the item, and if it does not, you will at least know that the purchase falls in a category where you need another solution, instead of discovering it months later on a stack of unmatched invoices.

Making the Policy Easy to Follow

A written policy tells people what they should do, and a structure makes it the easy thing to do. Pairing the two is what finally brings maverick spend under control, because the people who buy toner on a Friday afternoon then have a contracted supplier, a better price and a clear way to order.

For a closer look at the causes of maverick spend and the ways to manage it, download our guide, Managing maverick spend, and contact our team to learn more.