Centralized procurement: from fighting windmills to real savings
For many, centralized procurement is like walking through a minefield. It is often perceived as interference in the competencies of individual departments, and buyers thus end up fighting an endless battle with windmills.
For many, centralized procurement is like walking through a minefield. It is often perceived as interference in the competencies of individual departments, and buyers thus end up fighting an endless battle with windmills.
What if the goal were not immediate profit maximization, strict standardization, and forcing things through, but rather a calm tender to gain an overview, leverage economies of scale, and streamline processes? Such an approach opens the door to gradual and non-intrusive centralization, better results, and fewer conflicts.
In Promitea procurement software, based on extensive experience, we have created a tool that can involve technical guarantors and enable joint tenders with the option to select different suppliers and specifications for different locations.
(1) Tender preparation by experts: already in the preliminary round, directly in Promitea, experts define key technical and functional parameters, including supplementary specifications and recommended suppliers. It is simple, flexible, and you can freely add parameters or leave some blank. It’s great that they can also immediately suggest suppliers.
(2) Adding business terms and tender strategy: buyers add business conditions, add suppliers, and launch the tender. Nothing needs to be retyped from one system to another, saving time and avoiding errors and misunderstandings.
(3) Targeted offers: suppliers offer only what is realistically feasible for them and set prices based on the specific specification and costs for each location (we may have different packaging, transport requirements, specification differences).
(4) Smart supplier selection: buyers then compare the offers and split volumes among several suppliers according to their relative performance and price level. It is easy to open a second round for selected suppliers and locations.
Thanks to this structure, Promitea reflects the reality of centralized procurement, reduces friction points, saves time and money, and helps focus on what matters – painless and non-restrictive involvement of individual locations.
For serious prospects, we have prepared a practical example of procuring marketing materials, where we can demonstrate the entire process step by step.
💡 Take advantage of our know-how and turn centralized procurement into a tool that unites, not divides.
At the end of 2025, LinkedIn procurement influencer Joel Collin-Demers—who uses the social network as a platform to build visibility and reach potential customers—put forward a rather radical idea that sparked discussion across the procurement community (nearly 60 comments). You’ll find a link to the LinkedIn post at the end of this article.
Why is saving money no longer enough? Most of us who started out in purchasing in the last century remember the heroic tales of brilliant managers who managed to reduce costs by tens of percent through a combination of market power, toughness, and cunning. In this golden age of cost killers, purchasing was judged almost exclusively by parameters such as hard savings, acceleration of the purchasing process, reduction of administrative costs, and reducing the number of buyers. Unfortunately, hard savings cannot be made indefinitely.
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Return on investment within the first year of project implementation.*
*The ROI estimate is based on real data gathered from our clients and their successfully completed projects.
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