National logistics group, UK
A UK logistics group was spending £38 million a year on technology through 140 suppliers, with a thirteen week average deal cycle and renewals that signed themselves. C4C rebuilt the way it buys: every contract mapped and benchmarked against what the market actually pays, the approval chain cut from seven steps to three, and C4C in the room for every vendor negotiation. Cycle times fell 45 percent and £2.3 million was realised in the first year.
Technology spend had grown to £38 million a year across 140 suppliers, but the process for spending it had not changed in a decade. A typical purchase took thirteen weeks to clear seven approval steps, renewals auto renewed because nobody owned the calendar, and no one could say whether a quote was fair because nothing had ever been benchmarked. The business was paying twice: once in margin it could not see, and again in projects that waited a quarter for a purchase order.
C4C worked inside the client’s procurement and technology teams for two years, on a fixed advisory fee. The first quarter was spent mapping every contract and renewal, the second rebuilding the process, and the rest running the deals alongside the team until the new way of buying was theirs rather than ours.
Delivered through our IDEAL framework, the disciplined method behind every C4C engagement.
Within one quarter the client had moved from reactive buying to evidence led acquisition, and within a year the numbers were the client’s own. What surprised everyone, including us, was where the money was: less in the headline discount than in the services lines, the bundles and the renewals nobody had ever questioned.
We spent years on the vendor side building exactly the quotes this client was receiving, so we know how a services line is padded, where a bundle hides a tier you do not need, and which discounts a vendor will actually stand behind. Our advice is paid for as advice. Where we also supplied a product on this engagement, we said so and showed the pricing, because the value of the work depends on the client being able to see it.
Key technologies
More than the discount suggests, because the saving is not only price. Here £2.3 million was realised in the first year against £38 million of spend, about 6 percent of the whole technology budget, and 20 to 30 percent was identified on the individual contracts benchmarked. The rest of the gain was time: deals that took thirteen weeks now take seven, which is a quarter of project delay removed from every purchase.
Five things did the work in this engagement. Own the renewal calendar and open every renewal twelve months out. Benchmark every material quote against what the market pays before you talk to the vendor. Keep the approval chain short, with one accountable owner per deal. Read the quote the way the vendor built it, especially the services lines and the bundles. And review savings against the benchmark every quarter, so the process stays honest after the consultants leave.
By knowing where it is put. Margin lives in services lines priced by the day rather than the task, in bundles that include a tier or a module you will not use, in list price assumptions that no customer actually pays, and in renewal uplifts presented as policy. On the template deal here, a £1.4 million storage refresh, 22 percent of the services line was padding and the bundle included a tier the estate did not need. It closed at £1.05 million.
It is our structured approach to technology acquisition: Identify the landscape and its hidden costs, Decide by benchmarking suppliers and agreements, Execute the engagement, approvals and contracting, then Adopt the new practice and manage the Lifecycle so savings and renewals keep being reviewed. It is a way of making buying repeatable rather than heroic.
The first quarter is enough to see the change, because mapping the contracts and fixing the approval chain pays back immediately. Here the client moved from reactive to evidence led buying within a quarter, and the full year one saving was realised inside twelve months. The engagement ran for two years so the new way of buying became the team’s own.
Our advice is paid for as advice, and on this engagement that is what we were paid for. Where a client asks us to supply a product, as this one did for two purchases, we say so and show the pricing. The point is not that we never transact. It is that you can always see when we do, and what it cost.
Tell us what you are working through. We will give you an independent, vendor neutral view and a clear next step.
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