Following our recent CASME SpotLight event, we reflect on one of the main questions raised: what separates an approved category strategy from one that is implemented and influences business decisions?

Category management is well established across Procurement.  But there is still an important difference between having a category plan and having a category strategy that genuinely influences business decisions.

Many procurement teams analyse spend, assess supply markets, engage stakeholders and build annual sourcing pipelines.  The harder question comes afterwards:

What happens when the category strategy is finished?

Our SpotLight poll highlighted the challenge.  Only 19% of respondents said their category strategy was actively championed by business stakeholders and shaped purchasing decisions.  Others reported strategies that were signed off but only occasionally referenced, shared but rarely used, or primarily used to guide Procurement's own planning.  A further 24% did not have a formally documented category strategy.

For procurement leaders, this raises an important question:

A category strategy should not simply produce a better document.  It should help the organisation make better decisions about value, risk, suppliers, demand and changing market conditions.

Here are seven questions procurement teams can use to test whether their category strategy is likely to do that.

1. Is it really a category strategy, or an annual plan?

A category plan normally describes what Procurement intends to do over a defined period: sourcing projects, contract renewals, negotiations, supplier reviews and savings targets.

A category strategy goes further.

It should establish the longer-term direction for the category, make clear choices about how it will be managed and explain how those choices support business priorities.

That means considering demand, supply markets, cost and value drivers, risk, technology, sustainability and supplier capability.

CASME's recent work across five regions found many organisations are strong at annual planning and structured sourcing, while their strategic architecture has not developed at the same pace.

A mature strategy should provide multi-year value logic, agreed business outcomes and a basis for changing course when circumstances require it.

The test: Does the strategy help people make decisions, or does it mainly list procurement activity?

 

2. Did the business help create it?

From our SpotLight poll, only 19% of respondents said their completed strategy was actively shaping stakeholder purchasing decisions.

How the strategy is created may be part of the problem.

Procurement can conduct the analysis, write the strategy and then ask the business to review and approve it.  That may secure sign-off, but it does not necessarily create ownership.

During CASME RoundTable discussions, members highlighted more integrated approaches: category planning alongside annual budget setting, sourcing calendars aligned with business planning cycles, jointly agreed KPIs and Procurement's involvement embedded into project approval governance.

The language of the strategy also needs to reflect stakeholder priorities.  Finance may focus on cash flow and cost avoidance, Operations on continuity and resilience, and Quality on compliance and supplier performance.

The test: Do key stakeholders see this as Procurement's strategy—or as a strategy they helped shape?

 

3. Does Procurement have the mandate to deliver it?

Strong stakeholder relationships matter, but they do not replace clear decision rights.

Procurement can understand a category exceptionally well and still have limited influence if it becomes involved only after the specification, budget or preferred supplier has already been decided.

This is particularly common in indirect procurement, where spending authority may sit across several functions, regions or business units.  The result can be a strong category strategy that remains advisory.

CASME members discussed different ways of addressing this, from globally-led strategies with local flexibility to regional centres of excellence and hybrid models with explicit global, regional and local decision rights.

There is no single model that works everywhere.  What matters is clarity.

Who owns demand?  Who selects the supplier?  When must Procurement be involved?  What can be decided locally?  Who approves an exception?

The test: Is Procurement accountable for the strategy while also having enough authority to influence the decisions required to deliver it?

4. How will your category strategy deliver value?

Savings remain central to Procurement's performance, but they are rarely the only outcome expected from category management.

Our discussions identified four broad dimensions of value: financial, operational, strategic, and risk and ESG.  Depending on the category, that could include savings, cost avoidance, cash flow, cycle time, compliance, supplier innovation, stakeholder satisfaction, resilience and sustainability.

The issue is not simply adding more KPIs.  It is to agree what constitutes value before executing the strategy.

Cost avoidance illustrates the issue.  If Procurement reports a large avoided cost at year end, Finance may challenge the baseline.  If Procurement, Finance and the budget owner agreed the benchmark and methodology beforehand, the outcome becomes much more credible.

The same principle applies to resilience, innovation and other measures.

The test: Have Procurement and its stakeholders agreed what success looks like—and how they will measure it?

 

5. Can your category strategy adapt to market changes?

A detailed three-year strategy can look impressive when it is approved.  Six months later, the market may have moved significantly.

Tariffs, geopolitical disruption, supplier consolidation, energy prices, regulation and technology are all part of today's operating environment.  Category strategy needs enough stability to provide direction and enough flexibility to respond when circumstances change.

One approach discussed in the CASME SpotLight is separating strategic intent from the activities used to deliver it.

A three-to-five-year category charter can establish the overall direction, while annual priorities, sourcing levers and performance measures change when defined trigger conditions occur.

The strategy does not need to be rewritten whenever something changes.  Instead, it should tell the team what remains constant—and what would trigger a different course of action.

The test: If the market changed significantly tomorrow, would the strategy help the organisation decide what to do next?

 

6. How is AI changing category strategy in Procurement?

Is AI improving the strategy, or just producing it faster?

AI is already becoming part of category management.

In our SpotLight poll, 32% of respondents said AI was being used across the category strategy lifecycle for activities including analysis, drafting, market monitoring and contract review.  A further 41% were using it for specific tasks such as contract review or spend analysis.

AI can accelerate spend analysis, market research, contract review, supplier intelligence and first-draft strategy development.  It can also help monitor market changes that could trigger a strategy review.

But there is an important distinction between producing a strategy faster and producing a better strategy.

AI can process information and generate recommendations.  It does not own the budget, understand every internal trade-off or carry accountability for the commercial decision.

Its greatest value may therefore be in removing data-heavy and administrative work, so category managers have more time for interpretation, challenge and stakeholder discussion.

The test: Is AI creating more documents, or creating more capacity for better commercial decisions?

 

7. Are category managers developing the skills the new model requires?

Traditional category management capabilities remain essential: spend analysis, strategic sourcing, negotiation, contract management and supplier relationship management.

What is changing is where professional time is likely to be spent.

First-draft documentation, routine market analysis, data gathering and process administration are increasingly suitable for automation.

This increases the value of capabilities requiring human judgement: influencing senior stakeholders, challenging demand, interpreting risk, negotiating trade-offs, scenario thinking and understanding the wider business context.

AI literacy matters too, but it should not be treated as a standalone capability.  It is increasingly part of how category managers research, analyse and make decisions.

The test: Are you developing category managers to produce better category strategies, or to make better business decisions?

 

From category strategy to business decision-making

Procurement maturity is often assessed through category management processes, templates, training and documented strategies.  Those remain useful indicators, but there is a more demanding test:

If market conditions, stakeholder requirements or supplier circumstances changed significantly tomorrow, would the category strategy help the organisation decide what to do next?

Not every category needs the same degree of sophistication.  A stable, low-risk category does not require the same strategic architecture as one exposed to concentrated supply markets, geopolitical disruption, regulatory change or significant business dependency.

For procurement leaders, the objective should be to ensure the most strategically important categories are managed at the level their circumstances require.

That means looking beyond the template to stakeholder ownership, Procurement's decision rights, value measurement, adaptability and the role AI can play in releasing capacity for better judgement.

Ultimately, the strongest category strategy is not necessarily the longest or most detailed.

It is the one the organisation uses to make decisions.