How to Deliver Strategic Value from Procurement Optimisation

You’ve digitised your procurement process, and the foundations are in place. But what if you could move beyond ‘good enough’ and truly optimise, unlocking next‘level insight, agility, and value across your organisation?

The ‘Optimise’ stage is where procurement shifts from process efficiency to enterprise-wide impact. It’s where digital sourcing foundations evolve into scalable, strategic systems enabling smarter decisions, stronger supplier relationships, and measurable ROI beyond cost savings.

This is the second blog in our Sourcing Excellence Hub series: Your Pathway to Procurement Transformation and follows on from the first stage of procure-tech maturity, Digitise. To learn more about this stage, visit our Digitise resources.

What comes after digitalisation?

After rolling out digital sourcing tools many companies hit a plateau, gains slow, and adoption flattens. You’re at a pivotal moment where digital promise needs to meet real-world challenges. 

Take the example of Imperial Brands. Prior to working with Market Dojo, they used a ‘top-right quadrant’ Source to Contract (S2C) solution but it became apparent to Ciaran Owens, Head of Procurement, that it was poorly adopted leading to even poorer results within the procurement function.

Following an internal assessment, Ciaran established a rigorous process for requirements gathering which enabled Imperial Brands to look beyond the top-right quadrant providers to find a solution that would best fit their needs. 

The fix? They embraced optimisation and process reinvention, embedding best-practice templates and standardisation across teams.

“We approached the project by asking ourselves how we can use a tool to make things better,” says Ciaran, “We were focused on the end result, not just that we wanted a new tool.” 

Read more about Imperial Brands success story.

What is procurement optimisation?

Procurement optimisation means improving how a business buys goods and services, not just to save money, but to add strategic value. It goes beyond using digital tools and focuses on making procurement a smarter, more efficient, and more impactful part of the business.

This stage isn’t just about doing more, it’s about doing it better. 

Let’s listen to how Imperial Brands took a user-centric approach to the change management aspect of their procurement optimisation.

How do I know we’re ready for procurement optimisation?

This stage of procurement digitisation is identified by a shift in thinking from “We’ve digitalised our sourcing processes” to a mindset of “We’re enabling company-wide ROI and value creation through procurement”.

So, if your team is asking…

• What’s next after digitalisation?
• How can we improve user adoption across other departments?
• How do we scale success across global teams?

…you’re in the right place.

Explore the Optimise resources on our Sourcing Excellence Hub that tackle the challenges you may be facing at this second stage of procure-tech maturity.