Procurement benchmarking.
Are you performing as well as your peers? PI compares what you pay, and how your procurement function runs, against organisations like yours.
Are you paying the right price?
Category benchmarking compares your prices and terms with the market, across indirect and direct categories. It shows where you are paying more than your peers, and gives your negotiators the evidence to change it.
- Prices, rates and terms compared with organisations like yours.
- Costs and supplier margins checked against the broader market.
- A value for money score you can track as your organisation changes.
Categories we benchmark include:
Labour hire
A high-volume category with strong supplier competition, and significant opportunities as workforces become more casual.
Recruitment services
Balance the cost of recruitment against its outcomes, and measure both independently.
IT contractors
Bring visibility to costs and margins in what is often a black box, and check them against the market.
Contact centres
No one spends more time with your customers. Understand the value your contact centre provides for what it costs.
Travel
A contentious, complex category that is hard to control. Measure its value and its risk.
Office supplies
Used by everyone, and often the barometer for how people judge procurement's value.
IT hardware
A significant cost with few suppliers, which leaves room for higher margins.
Marketing and media
Check you are getting the most from a category where waste is famously hard to see.
Cash and banking services
Touches every transaction. Make sure you are not overpaying for it.
Health
Rising costs and demand. Measure value so outcomes meet your stakeholders' expectations.
How does your procurement function compare?
Function benchmarking looks at how procurement runs, not only at what it pays: about 100 views of your function against peers and good practice, with the gaps quantified and put in priority order.
Benchmarking can be internal (across business units, regions or years), competitive (against direct peers), functional (procurement practice across industries) or generic (lessons from leaders outside procurement). PI treats it as a cycle of measuring, comparing, learning and improving, rather than a one-off report.
Frequently asked questions.
What is procurement benchmarking?
A structured comparison of procurement's prices and performance against standards, peers or leaders. It sets a clear baseline, identifies good practice and shows where to improve.
Why benchmark procurement performance?
To prove procurement's contribution to executives, boards and auditors; find where you lag; set targets grounded in data rather than guesswork; justify investment in people or technology; and find weak spots before they become business issues.
How do I know if benchmarking is right for my organisation?
It adds most value when you are unsure how you compare with peers, are planning an improvement programme or technology investment, face questions about procurement's value, are growing, merging or restructuring, or are under audit or regulatory scrutiny.
Can benchmarking improve supplier negotiations?
Yes. Market data lets you challenge supplier quotes, use peer comparisons to ask for better performance, uncover costs beyond the unit price, and set service levels and contract terms in line with good practice.
See how you compare.
Tell us which categories matter most and we will show you how benchmarking works with your data.