Procurement teams are under pressure from more directions than in recent years. Budgets are tighter. Supply chains are less predictable. And the list of things procurement is expected to manage, from cost reduction to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) compliance, continues to grow.
If you lead or work within a procurement function, many of these pressures will feel familiar, even if you’re unsure what’s creating them, and what you can do about them.
Why procurement is under more pressure than ever
The workload on procurement functions has risen sharply in recent years. Industry research suggests that even high-performing procurement organisations now face a growing gap between ambition and execution. Category teams are buried under administrative work, sourcing cycles are too slow to match market conditions, and insight generation is fragmented across disconnected systems.
The gap between what your team is expected to deliver and the resources you have to do it with is at the root of many of the problems in the procurement process today. Procurement is no longer measured on cost alone. It is expected to manage risk, support sustainability targets, adopt new technology, and contribute to business strategy. And often with similar team sizes to five years ago.
1) Inflation and cost volatility
Persistent inflation remains one of the most visible procurement challenges. Even as headline rates shift, input costs for raw materials, energy, and labour have stayed volatile. Wage growth adds further strain. And as firms face higher payroll costs, many pass those increases through to their goods and services, squeezing procurement budgets downstream.
This creates a constant cycle of renegotiation for procurement teams. Contracts you agreed on 12 or 18 months ago may no longer reflect current market pricing, and the volume of supplier conversations required to manage cost exposure has grown significantly.
2) Supply chain disruption and geopolitical risk
Global supply chains have faced repeated shocks, from the aftereffects of the pandemic to ongoing conflicts and trade restrictions. Shipping route disruption, sanctions regimes, and shifting trade policy have all increased the cost and complexity of sourcing.
McKinsey estimates that major supply chain disruptions can cost companies a measurable share of annual revenue, often cited at around 0.5% on average. Applied to the UK economy, that figure runs into billions each year. The question worth asking is whether your supply base is too exposed to single regions or unstable sources, and what a more resilient sourcing model would look like.
These are not one-off events. Geopolitical instability, route disruptions, and protectionist trade measures are recurring issues in procurement that require ongoing attention, not just crisis response.
3) ESG demands and compliance requirements
Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) expectations are expanding fast. Stakeholders, including regulators, investors, and customers, increasingly expect organisations to demonstrate responsible sourcing and supply chain transparency. In procurement, that means building ESG requirements into supplier selection, contract terms, and ongoing performance management.
The challenge is practical as much as strategic. Devising, implementing, and meeting new ESG policies takes time and resources that most procurement functions do not have to spare. If your team is already stretched, adding ESG reporting and supplier assessments on top of existing workloads creates further strain. Balancing compliance with operational delivery is one of the most common procurement issues teams report.
4) Technology adoption and data gaps
Procurement industry trends point clearly toward greater use of technology, from spend analytics platforms to automation of routine tasks. But adopting new systems is itself a challenge. Many organisations still run procurement processes on legacy tools, spreadsheets, or disconnected platforms that provide limited visibility over spending. McKinsey estimates that procurement functions currently use less than 20% of the data available to them. This leaves a gap that limits forecasting, supplier evaluation, and cost management.
Even where you invest in procurement technology, the benefits depend on clean data, good integration, and a team with the skills to use the tools well. Without those foundations, new technology can create more problems than it solves.
The trend toward digital procurement is well established, but closing the gap between where most teams are now and where the technology could take them remains one of the most persistent trends in procurement.
5) Stretched teams and rising workloads
Many of the challenges in the procurement process come back to a resource problem. Teams are expected to manage more categories, more suppliers, and more compliance requirements, but often with the same or fewer people. That workload pressure affects strategic focus. When your team spends most of its time on day-to-day operations, longer-term work like category strategy, supplier development, and process improvement gets pushed back.
This is a common pattern across sectors. And you’d recognise it by often feeling like you know what needs to change but don’t have the bandwidth to act on it.
How procurement teams can respond to these challenges
The procurement challenges outlined above are not going away. But there are practical steps you can take to manage them more effectively.
Full risk assessment and supply base visibility
A structured risk assessment should cover financial stability, geographic concentration, and compliance exposure. This will give you a clearer picture of where your vulnerabilities are. Questions worth answering include:
- What risks do your current suppliers carry?
- How concentrated is the supply base in any single region?
- What contingency exists if a supplier fails?
Greater visibility over the supply base makes it easier to act early when conditions change, rather than reacting after the disruption has already affected operations.
Cross-functional cost ownership
Procurement does not control cost in isolation. Working closely with finance, operations, and commercial teams to review total cost of ownership, instead of just unit pricing, can help you find savings that procurement alone would miss.
Agile category management
Static category strategies do not hold up when market conditions shift quickly. Reviewing and updating your category plans regularly allows your team to respond to new risks and opportunities as they appear.
Technology-led efficiency
Where technology adoption is well managed, it frees your team from manual, repetitive work and gives them better data to make decisions with. Spend analytics, automated workflows, and scenario planning tools all contribute to a more capable function. Organisations that have invested in procurement technology report that the biggest gains come from improved data quality and reduced processing time.
How Barkers Procurement supports organisations facing procurement challenges
At Barkers Procurement, we combine spend analytics with professional expertise to give you a clear picture of where your procurement function stands and what needs to change. Senior members of our team are Chartered MCIPS, FCIPS, or equivalently qualified, with relevant honours degrees, MBAs, and PhDs in areas directly relevant to procurement and commercial practice.
Our approach starts with understanding the specific procurement issues your organisation faces. We then work in partnership with your in-house team to:
- build spend visibility through analytics
- agree on scope and opportunity
- deliver savings, consolidation, and control through our Procurement Managed Services
- manage procurement activity on an ongoing basis where needed
The result is a procurement function with better governance, lower costs, and the capacity to respond to new pressures as they arise.