Marketing has always been a difficult category for procurement to bring under management. In the earliest days, it was placed beyond our scope, and more recently, the lack of alignment with the business around 'value' versus savings has created an impasse. As a result, marketing operations spend (including branded merchandise, print, and point of sale) have fallen victim to fragmentation, maverick spending, and underdeveloped category strategies.

In this episode, which is based on a recent AOP Live session with Phil Schoonmaker, CEO of SupplyLogic, we discuss the current state of the marketing supply chain and how procurement can assess their baseline environment using both quantitative and qualitative data.

• How procurement may have been missing out on the opportunity to have a greater top line impact by defining the marketing spend category too narrowly
• The importance of achieving total price transparency across suppliers for specific product and service categories
• How Phil sees leading procurement organizations giving control back to requestors in the marketing category