Indirect procurement has never been ‘simple’, but building an effective indirect procurement strategy has never been more important.

Between inflationary cost pressure, supplier instability, rising stakeholder expectations, and growing demands for ESG and compliance, many procurement teams are being asked to deliver more savings, more control, and more strategic impact - often without additional budget or resources. In many cases, Procurement is expected to fix it all.

These pressures reflect the wider shifts facing procurement leadership, including rising expectations from the C-suite and increased scrutiny on strategic value delivery. An effective indirect procurement strategy balances cost control, risk management and stakeholder alignment, while positioning Procurement as a strategic partner to the business.

The good news? Measurable progress doesn’t require a full-scale transformation.

During CASME’s peer-to-peer benchmarking discussions with procurement leaders across multinational organisations, a consistent theme emerges: with the right indirect procurement strategy - aligned to your broader procurement strategy - there are practical, proven ways to improve performance quickly; even if you’re working with limited time, fragmented data, or stretched internal capacity.

In this article, we outline seven practical ways to strengthen your indirect procurement strategy and deliver measurable value without burning out: 

• Improve spend visibility without waiting for perfect data
• Reduce cost through smarter demand management
• Segment stakeholders to improve engagement
• Build lightweight, usable category strategies
• Strengthen supplier governance
• Use benchmarking to improve decision-making
• Make compliance easier than non-compliance.

Each of these actions strengthens your broader procurement strategy, without requiring major structural change. Together, they form the foundation of a resilient and practical indirect procurement strategy.

What Is Indirect Procurement?

Indirect procurement refers to the purchase of goods and services that support day-to-day business operations but are not directly used in producing a company’s core products or services. Typical categories include IT services, professional services, marketing, HR, travel, facilities management and office supplies.

Unlike direct procurement, where purchasing is closely tied to production requirements, indirect procurement is often stakeholder-driven, decentralised and harder to control, which can make visibility, governance and compliance more difficult to maintain.

What Is an Indirect Procurement Strategy?

An indirect procurement strategy defines how an organisation manages and optimises non-production spend. It sets the approach for improving spend visibility, influencing demand, managing supplier performance and aligning procurement activity with wider business objectives.

A strong indirect procurement strategy typically aims to:

• Improve visibility of indirect spend across business units
• Reduce unnecessary demand and specification complexity
• Strengthen supplier performance and governance
• Align procurement activity with wider business objectives
• Use benchmarking and market insight to guide decision-making and improvement efforts.

For many procurement teams, the goal is not simply cost reduction, but delivering measurable business value from indirect spend while maintaining service levels and managing risk.

Why a Strong Indirect Procurement Strategy Matters More Than Ever

Indirect categories (from professional services and IT, to marketing, HR and facilities) present unique challenges:

• Spend is dispersed across business units, regions and suppliers
• Demand is driven by stakeholders, not always by Procurement
• Specification can be subjective, especially in services and knowledge-based buying.

Unlike direct procurement, where requirements and supply markets are often more structured, indirect procurement success depends heavily on influencing behaviour, improving visibility and strengthening governance; all while maintaining service levels.
 

1. Start with Spend Visibility to Unlock Hidden Value 

You don’t need a flawless spend cube to take action, but you do need enough visibility to answer key questions: what are we buying, from whom, in which regions/business units, under what contracts, and with what level of compliance?

A practical indirect procurement strategy starts by focusing on your ‘top five’ in terms of: categories by spend, suppliers by value and risk, and stakeholder groups driving demand. This creates a prioritised view of where Procurement can have the biggest impact, and where leakage or unmanaged spend may be hiding.

Quick win: Run a ‘top supplier review’ for one category and validate whether suppliers are contracted, rationalised, and delivering expected value.
 

2. Tighten Demand Management Before Chasing Savings

One of the most overlooked opportunities in indirect procurement is demand management.

In many organisations, cost increases don’t come from suppliers, they come from over-specification, unnecessary renewals, duplicate tools/services, ‘urgent’ off-contract purchasing, and uncontrolled scope creep in services.

Before negotiating rates, ask a simple question: do we need this at all, and are we buying it the right way?

Several CASME members emphasise that opportunity identification shouldn’t be a one-off exercise. Instead, they integrate it into everyday category conversations and supplier reviews, creating a culture of continuous improvement rather than periodic cost-cutting campaigns.

Examples of demand levers that can often deliver more value than price negotiation alone include: reducing service tiers or licence levels, consolidating requirements across teams, introducing approval workflows for high-risk spend, and setting preferred options (not unlimited choice).

Quick win: Identify one ‘repeat buy’ service (e.g. research, training, consulting) and create a simple purchase request process through Procurement with pre-approved scopes and rates.
 

3. Segment Stakeholders and Tailor Your Approach

A common reason indirect procurement programmes stall is because stakeholder groups aren’t treated differently.

Your internal customers usually fall into a few broad types, and each group responds to different messages. For example:

• Champions (already aligned with Procurement) want speed and clarity.
• Sceptics (need proof and reassurance) want evidence, benchmarking and risk mitigation.
• Independent buyers (prefer autonomy) want flexibility and control.
• Urgent requesters (‘we needed it yesterday’) want fast routes to compliant purchasing.

A strong indirect procurement strategy shifts Procurement from ‘policing’ to enabling.

Cross-functional forums are increasingly being used by CASME member organisations to promote dialogue, share best practice and standardise reporting. These structured touchpoints help move Procurement from gatekeeper to collaborative partner.

Quick win: Create a one-page ‘How Procurement Helps’ guide for a key function (IT, Marketing, HR) showing what you can do quickly, what needs planning, and how to engage early.
 

4. Build Category Strategies That Are Simple and Usable

Category strategies don’t need to be 40-slide decks to be effective.

In indirect procurement, a useable category or procurement strategy should clearly answer four questions:

• What outcomes are we trying to achieve (in terms of cost, risk, innovation, compliance)?
• What does the supply market look like?
• What’s our current position (spend, suppliers, performance)?
• What’s the plan for the next 6–12 months?

The best strategies are working documents, designed to be used and updated regularly, not presentations filed away. That’s why leading procurement leaders are future-proofing category management, adapting strategies in a rapidly changing environment.

A lightweight, action-focused indirect procurement strategy helps you align stakeholders, justify sourcing activity, create a roadmap of initiatives, and track measurable progress against value delivery.

Quick win: For one priority category, create a ‘strategy on a page’ and use it as the basis for stakeholder conversations.

In CASME’s peer forums, procurement leaders frequently highlight the importance of governance structures that monitor workload distribution and progress against objectives. Clear prioritisation frameworks and visible progress tracking help category managers balance reactive demands with proactive value creation.
 

5. Strengthen Supplier Management Beyond Performance Reviews

In many organisations, supplier management is limited to annual reviews, reactive issue resolution, and contract renewals under time pressure. 

But indirect suppliers often impact sensitive areas such as employee experience, brand reputation, data security and regulatory exposure.

A more robust supplier management model includes clear KPIs linked to business outcomes, defined service-level expectations and escalation routes, structured quarterly business reviews (QBRs), proactive risk monitoring, and improvement plans (not just scorecards).

Negotiating without performance clarity rarely delivers sustained value.

CASME members have moved beyond traditional scorecards, introducing combined dashboards that track both financial and operational impact; linking supplier performance to business outcomes rather than isolated metrics. This makes value more visible and easier to communicate internally.

Quick win: Choose one strategic supplier and introduce a quarterly review cadence with 3–5 measurable outcomes and one improvement target.
 

6. Use Benchmarking to Strengthen Your Indirect Procurement Strategy

One of the hardest parts of indirect procurement is knowing what ‘good’ looks like. For many teams, procurement benchmarking and performance comparison remain ongoing challenges - particularly when internal data lacks external context.

Without benchmarks, teams often struggle to answer: are our rates competitive, is our procurement strategy mature compared with peers, are we under-resourced, is our savings performance realistic?

Negotiating without benchmarks is like negotiating blindfolded.

Benchmarking helps procurement leaders make confident decisions and communicate them clearly to stakeholders. It also supports better supplier conversations by grounding discussions in market reality rather than internal opinion or AI-generated insight.

If you’re unsure how your indirect procurement strategy compares with peers, structured procurement benchmarking insights can provide immediate clarity on relative performance strengths, capability gaps and priority improvement areas.

Benchmarking also strengthens Procurement’s internal narrative. Several CASME members use structured reporting and storytelling to translate benchmarking insight into business-relevant language - helping Leadership see Procurement not just as a cost controller, but as a strategic partner.

Quick win: Benchmark one category or one process maturity area and use the insights to prioritise improvement initiatives and focus sourcing effort.
 

7. Make Compliance Easier than Non-Compliance

Procurement compliance rarely improves through policy reminders alone.

It improves when the compliant route is faster, simpler, clearly communicated, and aligned with stakeholder needs. That might mean a short list of preferred suppliers, standardised scopes and rate cards, easy-to-use buying channels, clear ‘when to involve Procurement’ guidance, and templates that reduce stakeholder effort.

Many teams are also leveraging digital solutions to automate transactional tasks and simplify buying channels. By reducing manual workload, Procurement creates more capacity for strategic activity while making compliant routes faster and more intuitive.

The aim is to remove friction, not add it.

Quick win: Audit one category’s buying journey from the stakeholder’s perspective and eliminate one step that causes delays or workarounds.

What Makes an Effective Indirect Procurement Strategy?

An effective indirect procurement strategy typically focuses on four core capabilities:

Clear spend visibility across categories, suppliers and business units
Strong stakeholder engagement to influence demand and specification
Structured supplier governance to manage performance and risk
External benchmarking to validate strategy and performance.

Organisations that develop these capabilities are better positioned to move Procurement beyond cost control and towards strategic value delivery.

Progress Beats Perfection

Many procurement leaders treat their indirect spend strategy as a continuous improvement programme rather than a one-off transformation.

Indirect procurement teams don’t need to fix everything at once. A focused procurement strategy for indirect categories can deliver faster returns than large-scale transformation.

The biggest value gains often come from improving visibility, strengthening demand management, aligning stakeholders, managing supplier performance more actively, and building practical category strategies.

If you can improve just one of these areas each quarter, you’ll build credibility, momentum, and measurable value, without needing a major transformation programme.

Want to Strengthen Your Indirect Procurement Strategy?

If you’re under increasing pressure to deliver more value from indirect spend, without additional resources, you’re not alone.

Through peer-led benchmarking, facilitated discussions, shared practical insight and structured performance comparison, CASME helps procurement leaders:

• Understand how their indirect procurement strategy compares with peers
• Identify the fastest opportunities to unlock value
• Strengthen governance, compliance and stakeholder alignment
• Prioritise improvement without large-scale transformation.

If you’d like to see what ‘good’ looks like across your categories, and where your biggest opportunities sit, get in touch for a confidential discussion to explore how CASME is supporting leading procurement teams around the world.