WFA: Procurement Focus Must Shift To Value-Creation Approach

The World Federation of Advertisers is out with a new report on marketing procurement. Two years in the making the report is a best practices guide for marketers who want to utilize procurement to help maximize ROI from media and marketing spending investments and not just focus on cost cutting.

The report, written by the 12 founder members of the WFA’s Global Sourcing Board, is timely given the pressure that many companies are under to slash costs to maintain financial stability during the pandemic.

The catalyst for the report was a WFA research finding that procurement is seen as a must process for marketers. At the same time most of the marketers polled in a 2018 survey said they believed the way procurement was implemented by their organizations could be improved.

A key finding is that procurement metrics tend to focus on cost-cutting goals and far too less on marketing goals like how media investments contribute to a firm’s revenue growth.

The report also found that marketing procurement teams often don’t have full visibility on marketing spend, limiting the overall contribution they make. Procurement teams should also be more involved in marketing budget planning both to gain knowledge and add value.

Procurement teams need to forge deeper relationships with outside marketing partners like ad agencies, the report concludes. “A well-managed agency is an obvious competitive advantage for clients and is a mirror of a successful marketing procurement function.”

“The future of sourcing is in adding value beyond savings,” stated Laura Forcetti, the WFA’s marketing sourcing global lead. That will only happen if there is a “shift from a primarily savings outlook to a value creation approach.”

The full report can be downloaded here.

 

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