Procurement Solutions

Diversified holding · UAE

AED 38m annualised saving, third year running

Nine businesses buying the same eleven categories from four hundred suppliers. Consolidated, retendered, and held — the saving has not eroded across three renewals.

The client

A diversified holding company with nine operating businesses in construction, hospitality and logistics, buying independently across every indirect category.

The challenge

Indirect spend of roughly AED 310m ran through more than four hundred suppliers with no group view. The same categories were bought at materially different rates by different businesses, and there was no mechanism to stop the gap reopening after a tender.

What we did

We built a single spend cube across the nine businesses, retendered the eleven categories that mattered as group agreements, and put a compliance measure in place so that buying off-contract is visible in the month it happens.

How we ran it

One view of spend

Nine ledgers normalised into one categorised cube before a single supplier was contacted.
Test the market

Eleven categories retendered as group agreements with volume the individual businesses never had.
Move the buying

Catalogues and approval routing changed so the contracted supplier is the easy option, not the correct one.
Measure compliance

Off-contract spend reported monthly by business, which is what has stopped the saving eroding.

Results

AED 38m

annualised saving, sustained into year three
12.3%

reduction on addressable indirect spend
94%

on-contract compliance, from 61%

“Everyone can find a saving in a tender. The difference here was that it was still there when we looked again eighteen months later.”

Group Chief Operating Officer Diversified holding company

Facilities operator · GCC

34 hrs requisition to purchase order

A six-day approval chain rebuilt into a thirty-four-hour one, without removing a single control that mattered.

The client

A facilities management operator running eleven hundred sites, raising around ninety thousand purchase orders a year, most of them low-value and urgent.

challenge

Requisitions took six working days to become purchase orders because every one of them travelled the same approval chain regardless of value or category. Site teams had learned to buy first and raise the paperwork afterwards, which is where the control was genuinely being lost.

What we did

We rebuilt the workflow around risk rather than uniformity: catalogue items under threshold auto-approve against a pre-agreed contract, everything else routes by category to the approver who actually understands it.

How we ran it

Find the real path

Ninety thousand historic requisitions analysed for value, category and where each one waited.
Route by risk

Thresholds and category routing agreed with finance so approval effort matches exposure.
Catalogue the routine

The eighteen hundred most-bought items put on contract and into a catalogue that auto-approves.
Close the back door

Retrospective purchase orders reported by site, which fell away once the front door was quicker.

Results

34 hrs

median requisition to purchase order, from 6 days
71%

of orders auto-approved against contract
88%

fall in retrospective purchase orders

Transport authority · Abu Dhabi

2,400 → 640 active suppliers

A supplier list that had grown for eleven years, reduced to the ones actually being used and actually qualified — with the risk monitoring that should have come with them.

The client

A public transport authority procuring across engineering, maintenance, professional services and technology, with a supplier master that had never been culled.

The challenge

Twenty-four hundred suppliers were active in the system; fewer than seven hundred had been transacted with in two years. Qualification records were incomplete for around a third of them, and there was no monitoring of financial or sanctions risk after onboarding — an exposure the authority could not evidence away.

What we did

We rationalised the master against actual transaction history, requalified the suppliers that remained, and put continuous financial and sanctions screening in place so that qualification is a state rather than a one-off event.

How we ran it

Establish who is real

The master reconciled against two years of transactions and against the contract repository.
Requalify

Every retained supplier taken through a single qualification standard, including the ones assumed to be fine.
Retire the rest

Dormant records deactivated in tranches with a route back, so nothing was lost that was needed.
Monitor continuously

Financial and sanctions screening now runs against the live base rather than at onboarding.

Results

2,400 → 640

active suppliers in the master
100%

of retained suppliers requalified to one standard
Daily

financial and sanctions screening, from none

Buy better not just cheaper.

Capabilities

Four practices, one supplier base.

Why Solutions+

Savings that are still there next year.

Three engagements, three kinds of saving.

The client

The challenge

What we did

How we ran it

One view of spend

Test the market

Move the buying

Measure compliance

Results

The client

challenge

What we did

How we ran it

Find the real path

Route by risk

Catalogue the routine

Close the back door

Results

The client

The challenge

What we did

How we ran it

Establish who is real

Requalify

Retire the rest

Monitor continuously

Results

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