Earlier this year, we invited procurement professionals to share how their organisations use sourcing optimisation in practice. The response was strong, and the results are now in: the Sourcing Optimisation Adoption Survey Report is ready to download.
The findings confirm what many practitioners already suspect: sourcing optimisation works. Satisfaction among active users is high, and recommendation rates are strong. The business case is not in question.
What is less certain is what happens after the first successful pilot.
Where the gap lies
Sourcing optimisation allows procurement teams to evaluate complex sourcing decisions using mathematical models – testing thousands of scenarios and weighing supplier trade-offs and expressive bids that traditional tenders cannot process. Most organisations that try it report positive results. Trying it once and building a lasting capability around it, however, are two different things.
Only 29% of organisations that adopted the methodology still apply it with the same depth and ambition as in their first projects. The report examines why, not through a single number, but across three dimensions – breadth, depth and sustainability – that together show where adoption tends to stall, and what separates organisations that keep scaling from those that quietly regress.
Technology alone won’t close the gap
As in our previous research, the data points to a familiar conclusion: the limiting factor is rarely the software. It is the capability and support required to use it well. Organisations that treat sourcing optimisation as a business capability, rather than a one-time implementation, tend to sustain adoption more successfully than those that don’t. The report looks at which support models make a difference, and why continuity is harder to maintain than most teams expect.
What you’ll find in the report
- How widely sourcing optimisation is being adopted, and where organisations tend to plateau
- The barriers that most commonly cause adoption to regress after a strong start
- What distinguishes organisations that sustain and scale the methodology from those that fall back to traditional sourcing
- Practical priorities for procurement leaders looking to build lasting capability, not just a successful pilot
Read the report
The Sourcing Optimisation Adoption Survey Report brings together all findings, benchmarks and practical recommendations for procurement leaders.
Get in touch with our team to receive your copy or to discuss how the findings apply to your organisation and how to move from isolated pilots to a systematic sourcing capability.