The company
This organization operates the gas distribution network across a significant portion of the UK, accountable to millions of customers.
Their procurement team is fewer than 10 people, led by the Head of Procurement and Sourcing, with a procurement director and small group of managers and buyers. Their key goals include increasing spend through automation, achieving cost savings, and integrating AI-driven solutions for day-to-day efficiency. The team ultimately seeks to enable business users to independently manage procurement processes for purchases up to £50K, freeing procurement resources for higher-value initiatives.
The challenge
Operating within the highly regulated and resource-intensive energy sector, the company’s lean procurement team faced operational hurdles that made it difficult to reduce costs and streamline sourcing. These challenges slowed procurement cycles and limited strategic effectiveness:
- Manual Sourcing Processes: The team was limited by legacy manual processes, which constrained their ability to efficiently manage tail spend and tactical sourcing, ultimately reducing the volume of sourcing events they could execute.
- Tail Spend Management: The team was stretched thin, preventing them from dedicating sufficient bandwidth to high-volume, lower-value purchases
- Inadequate Supplier Engagement: They faced challenges with delayed supplier responses and insufficient supplier participation, negatively affecting competitive pricing and procurement efficiency.
- Lack of User Autonomy: Without a streamlined system, business users were unable to manage procurement processes independently, adding further strain to procurement team resources.
Given these challenges, the company needed a procurement solution that combined ease of use with strategic depth, one that could automate sourcing processes, increase supplier engagement, and enable business users to manage procurement activities independently. For a lean team, it was essential that the platform be intuitive and scalable, while also supporting strategic objectives and amplifying the impact of procurement across the organization.
Selecting and implementing Fairmarkit
Faced with mounting sourcing demands and constrained by manual processes, the company made a decisive move to partner with Fairmarkit. What began as a targeted solution for managing tail spend and driving savings rapidly evolved into a forward-thinking, enterprise-wide transformation. With Fairmarkit's intuitive platform and strong partnership approach, the company was able to scale procurement efforts, enhance transparency, and embed efficiency across their operations despite limited internal bandwidth.
Fairmarkit emerged as the ideal platform due to several key factors:
- Tail Spend Management: Fairmarkit provided a centralized digital platform to replace manual processes and tackle the company’s most pressing issue: tail spend. This quick win revealed the platform’s broader strategic value, prompting expansion across more complex sourcing operations.
- Enhanced Supplier Engagement: The platform significantly improved supplier responsiveness and transparency, enabling the company to capture competitive pricing and improve compliance.
- Expanded Capabilities: Beyond initial RFQs, the company expanded usage to strategic sourcing events, including RFPs, to maximize savings and scale procurement operations without increasing team size.
Implementation began with targeted pilots and scaled rapidly. Fairmarkit’s dedicated customer success team closely collaborated with the company to refine processes, support effective change management, and develop tailored procurement strategies, leading to immediate and tangible improvements in procurement operations.
Results
The Fairmarkit partnership sparked a comprehensive procurement transformation, enhancing agility, supplier responsiveness, and strategic visibility. The shift to digital procurement delivered measurable benefits across key areas:
Procurement Process Improvements
- 13% Increase in Identified Savings: Started driving financial efficiency through savings.
- 6.4% Awarded Savings Increase: Realized awarded savings through enhanced competitive sourcing.
- 50%+ Improvement in Supplier Response Rates: Significantly boosted supplier engagement and competitive bidding outcomes.
Procurement Efficiency Gains
- 46% Event Conversion Rate: Substantially increased conversion rates, demonstrating procurement’s enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.
- £10.31M Managed Spend: Achieved through 133 sourcing events in 12 months, averaging £78K per event.
Strategic Expansion
- £4M+ Estimated RFP Value: Initiated over 30 strategic RFP events, successfully awarding 12 events to unlock additional savings and supplier value.
These outcomes have transformed procurement's role from tactical function to a strategic force within the organization. By delivering both measurable savings and an intuitive, easy-to-use platform, Fairmarkit has empowered the procurement team to focus on high-value initiatives, collaborate more effectively with business stakeholders, and operate as a trusted partner driving enterprise-wide impact.
Looking Ahead
Building on their success, the company is focused on scaling procurement impact through autonomy, agility, and data-driven strategies, all powered by their partnership with Fairmarkit.
- Scalable Requester Enablement: The rollout of the KIT intake module empowers business users to initiate sourcing independently, improving internal efficiency and allowing the procurement team to focus on strategic priorities.
- Expanding Business-Led Procurement: By promoting more autonomous sourcing events led by requesters, the company is amplifying procurement output without increasing headcount.
- Insight-Driven Category Growth: A detailed spend analysis across thousands of purchase orders will uncover high-impact sourcing categories, directing Fairmarkit’s capabilities where they deliver the most value.
The procurement team’s transformation showcases what’s achievable with intuitive technology and a trusted partner. With Fairmarkit, the company has shifted from reactive sourcing to a strategic, insight-driven approach. By embedding automation and broadening procurement participation, they’ve achieved greater efficiency, agility, and alignment across the business without expanding their team.
