The procurement landscape entering 2023 is defined by competing pressures: inflationary cost environments demanding savings, supply chain disruptions requiring resilience, and digital transformation expectations pushing teams to modernize how they operate.
Cost Pressure and Market Intelligence
After years of relatively stable pricing in many indirect categories, organizations face real cost pressure. Vendors are raising prices, pointing to their own input cost increases as justification. Procurement teams that lack current market benchmarks are accepting these increases at face value.
Organizations handling this environment best are those with up-to-date competitive intelligence — knowing which vendor price increases are genuine market-driven adjustments and which are opportunistic margin grabs.
Supply Chain Resilience
Resilience requires deliberate diversification strategies. Procurement teams are mapping concentration risk, qualifying backup suppliers, and building more flexibility into category strategies.
Technology Adoption
Core procurement tools — spend analytics, contract management systems, e-sourcing platforms — are moving from nice-to-have to table stakes. Teams still operating on spreadsheets and email chains are falling behind peers who have invested in structured procurement technology.
Talent Retention
Procurement talent is in demand. Organizations competing for skilled category managers and procurement analysts need to articulate clear career paths and demonstrate that procurement is a strategic function — not an administrative one.
What This Means for Clients
CCM's priorities for 2023 include: recalibrating indirect spend contracts against current market rates, tightening governance on auto-renewals, and building the data foundations that make AI-assisted procurement viable in 2024 and beyond.