When the first edition of Managing Indirect Spend was published, Joe Payne and Bill Dorn often spoke to customers about what strategic sourcing was and what value it could bring to their organization. 10 years later, much has changed, but a lot has remained the same. Procurement is now much better known and recognized as a valuable corporate function, and yet we are still facing many of the same challenges we were back then.

Authors Joe Payne, Bill Dorn, Dave Pastore, and Jenn Ulrich all work for Corcentric, where they spend their time working with procurement teams to help them transform and mature. Many of their real life experiences are included in the book, allowing procurement leaders to learn from the journeys of others.

In this conversation, the authors speak with Host Philip Ideson about:

• How procurement can secure ‘sponsorship’ for strategic sourcing projects and encourage the business to engage them as early as possible
• The common mistakes or ‘landmines’ that undermine procurement’s efforts to bring spend under management
• Options for procurement organizational design that make it possible to address all of the levels of project complexity that naturally arise