A Comprehensive Guide to Managing Maverick Spend
Tame the chaos effectively.
Why maverick spend happens, what it actually costs your organization, and eight proven strategies to bring it back under control.
Updated May 2026
- Maverick spend (rogue spend) occurs when employees purchase outside established procurement policies
- Organizations lose up to 16% of targeted savings due to off-contract purchasing
- The two root causes are poor systems and non-compliant mentality. Both need to be addressed
- Eight strategies exist to control it: from e-procurement investment to employee engagement
- A carrot-and-stick approach is more effective than enforcement alone
- GPOs like Una reduce maverick spend by centralizing purchasing through a single approved supplier per category
What Is Maverick Spend?
DEFINITION
Maverick spend, also called rogue spend, occurs when employees make purchases outside of established procurement policies, bypassing approved suppliers, contracts, or purchasing channels.
It's one of procurement's most persistent problems. You negotiate favorable contract terms, build supplier relationships, pull off impressive deals, and then watch those hard-earned savings erode because someone booked a flight on a consumer travel site instead of the company's preferred provider, or ordered office supplies from a local store rather than the contracted vendor.
A Hackett Group study identified the top causes of maverick spend as poor or absent self-service buying tools and a non-compliant mentality. The key insight: fixing your systems is necessary, but not sufficient. The human factor matters just as much.
FINANCIAL IMPACT
of targeted savings lost to off-contract purchasing
Source: The Hackett Group
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Why Maverick Spend Happens
Rogue purchasing rarely reflects bad intent. The most common causes are:
Lack of Awareness
Employees simply don't know about procurement policies or the importance of using approved suppliers and channels.
Perceived Convenience
Employees believe they can get a better deal or move faster by bypassing official channels (often incorrectly).
Complex Processes
If the e-procurement system is clunky or confusing, employees will find workarounds, especially under time pressure.
The Problems with Maverick Spend
16%
Organizations can lose up to 16% of their targeted procurement savings due to maverick spend. If you negotiated a 10% discount with a preferred supplier, employees buying off-contract at full price effectively erases that entire saving and then some.
Source: The Hackett Group
Beyond direct financial loss, maverick purchasing creates a cascade of secondary problems across operations, compliance, and supplier relationships:
1.
Increased Workload
Unapproved purchases create messy invoices and complicated payment processes. Procurement teams spend hours reconciling unmatched receipts instead of focusing on strategic work. As the Hackett Group notes: when rogue spending occurs, process costs rise for nearly everyone involved: end-users spend more time shopping outside preferred channels, and procurement spends more time cleaning up after them.
2.
Financial Loss
Off-contract purchases forfeit negotiated discounts. These losses accumulate quickly. What starts as one team buying paper locally becomes a pattern that erodes budget across dozens of categories.
3.
Compliance Risks
Unauthorized purchases can violate contracts or regulatory requirements. An employee ordering from an unapproved vendor who doesn't meet industry regulations can expose the organization to penalties or legal liability plus reputational damage.
4.
Damaged Supplier Relationships
Contract volume commitments depend on employees actually using preferred suppliers. When they don't, contracted suppliers feel sidelined, making them less likely to offer favorable terms in future negotiations.
5.
Wasted Strategic Time
Hours spent managing rogue purchases could be applied to strategic sourcing, supplier development, and category management. Maverick spend is a tax on procurement's capacity.
6.
Sustainability Risks
Off-contract suppliers may not meet the organization's environmental or ethical standards. Unvetted purchasing can quietly undermine sustainability commitments and damage stakeholder trust.
Maverick Spend: A Real-World Example
Abstract problems are easier to address when grounded in a concrete scenario. Here's how maverick spend plays out in practice.
SCENARIO: OFFICE PAPER PURCHASING
The Set Up
Procurement negotiates a favorable annual deal with a stationery supplier for office paper, with a significant volume-based discount. All employees are notified by email with instructions on how to purchase via the e-procurement system.
What Actually Happens
Several teams decide to purchase off-contract for various reasons:
- The marketing team prefers a slightly glossier paper than the contracted product
- Some teams don't want to wait for delivery and buy locally instead
- One employee sees paper on sale locally and thinks she's helping the company
- Several team members find the e-procurement system too confusing to use
- Others claim they never knew about the policy or contracted supplier
Result
Spend on office paper rises over the year instead of falling. Off-contract purchases aren't captured in the system, making tracking impossible.
The supplier warns that volume commitments have been breached, threatening the discount for future terms. To make matters worse, some off-contract paper came from a supplier with poor environmental practices, exposing the organization to reputational risk.
8 Strategies to Control Maverick Spend
Regaining control requires addressing both the systemic and human causes of rogue purchasing. These eight strategies cover both dimensions.
1.
Invest in E-Procurement Systems
A centralized e-procurement platform encourages all employees to purchase through a single channel and captures spend data automatically. Implementation is an upfront investment, but the long-term savings, efficiency gains, and data visibility are worth it.
Note: the software alone isn't enough. Employees need training and clear processes. One effective enforcement method: refuse to process any order placed outside the system.
2.
Clarify Responsibilities
Many organizations assume someone is managing contracts after signing. Often, nobody is. Assign explicit ownership for each contract so agreements are actively monitored and upheld, not left to drift.
3.
Define Purchasing Roles
When everyone has the authority to make purchases, maverick spending is almost guaranteed to rise. Use procurement systems to set spending limits and define who can buy what, limiting unauthorized purchasing at the source.
4.
Tailor Procure-to-Pay (P2P) Processes
Different departments have genuinely different purchasing needs. A one-size-fits-all P2P process creates friction that drives people off-contract. Tailoring workflows to department-specific requirements reduces the perceived need to bypass the system.
5.
Enforce a No-PO, No-Pay Policy
A strict "no purchase order, no pay" rule is one of the most effective deterrents to maverick spend. It's sometimes unpopular, but it ensures every purchase is reviewed and approved before it's finalized, removing the option to bypass procurement entirely.
6.
Educate Employees
Many employees genuinely underestimate the organizational impact of small off-contract purchases. Regular training sessions that illustrate the real cost of rogue spending, like using the office paper example above, shift behavior more effectively than policy documents alone.
7.
Monitor Compliance Regularly
Compliance monitoring needs to be ongoing, not annual. Reviewing compliance monthly allows procurement teams to identify and address maverick spend patterns as they emerge, before they compound into larger problems.
8.
Engage with Maverick Spenders Directly
Talk to the people who buy off-contract most frequently. Their motivations reveal process gaps you may not have identified. Engaging with them as partners in improvement, rather than as rule-breakers, surfaces actionable insights and builds buy-in for compliance.
Getting Closer to Your Maverick Spenders
Rather than treating maverick spend purely as a compliance problem, consider what it's telling you. Off-contract purchasing is often a symptom of procurement processes that are difficult to navigate or stakeholder communication that isn't landing.
The employees buying outside approved channels are giving you real-time feedback. By understanding their challenges and frustrations, you can identify exactly where your procurement process is creating friction and fix it. A procurement environment that actually meets stakeholder needs generates far less maverick spend than one that's technically correct but practically unusable.
The Stick vs. Carrot Approach
Two broad approaches exist for managing maverick spend behavior, and the most effective programs use both:
THE STICK
Enforcement & Penalties
Strict policies with consequences for non-compliance. Effective as a deterrent, but applied alone it creates resentment, a "spend police" culture, and pushback from employees who feel micromanaged.
THE CARROT
Incentives & Recognition
Recognition programs, department bonuses for budget adherence, and acknowledgment of consistently compliant teams. Creates a collaborative culture where compliance feels rewarding, not punitive.
Benefits of Reducing Maverick Spend
Controlling rogue purchasing delivers value well beyond direct cost savings. The downstream benefits affect every part of the procurement function:
Increased Cost Savings
Procurement teams recover the full value of negotiated discounts when purchasing flows through approved channels as intended.
Improved Supplier Relationships
Meeting contracted volume commitments strengthens supplier partnerships and makes preferred pricing in future negotiations far more likely.
Lower Compliance & Operational Risk
Keeping purchases within approved supplier networks reduces exposure to regulatory violations, contract breaches, and reputational damage.
Enhanced Spend Analytics
Compliant purchasing flows through the e-procurement system, generating clean spend data that supports better analysis and decision-making.
Support for Sustainability Goals
Procurement policies ensure purchasing only flows to vetted suppliers that meet the organization's environmental and ethical standards.
Freed Procurement Capacity
Less time managing rogue purchases means more bandwidth for strategic sourcing, category management, and supplier development.
How GPOs Help Control Maverick Spend
One of the most structural solutions to maverick spend is removing the conditions that create it. A group purchasing organization (GPO) like Una does exactly that by centralizing purchasing decisions at the category level.
- Centralizes spending in each category through a single approved supplier, eliminating the need for employees to choose between vendors
- Provides explicit purchasing instructions so buyers know exactly how to use contracts removing the "I didn't know" cause entirely
- Acts as a procurement advisor, helping identify process gaps and complexity that drives off-contract behavior
- Simplifies the purchasing experience so that compliance becomes the path of least resistance, not a burden
- Reduces tail spend scatter by consolidating low-value, high-volume categories under a single managed contract
When a GPO manages your indirect spend categories, the conditions that produce maverick spend like too many choices, unclear processes, and complex systems, are replaced by a streamlined path to compliance. Your team spends less time policing rogue purchases and more time on the procurement work that actually moves the needle.
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