Question 1

Is this instead of hiring someone?

Accepted Answer

No, and we would not pitch it that way. This is a project with a beginning and an end: a hundred days to find the opportunities worth doing in your spend and capture the first few. A procurement hire is a permanent function. If anything the two fit together, because a new hire inherits a mapped spend base, a ranked opportunity list and a working set of tools instead of starting from a blank page.

Question 2

What do you need from us to start?

Accepted Answer

Four things: your spend, general ledger and accounts payable data; access to talk with your team, and where useful your customers and suppliers; anything you have already paid someone else to analyze, because we would rather build on it than repeat it; and sponsorship from the CEO and CFO so calendars actually open. That covers about eighty percent of what the engagement needs.

Question 3

How quickly can you start?

Accepted Answer

Quickly, and the clock we care about starts when the data lands rather than when the contract is signed. The first fifteen days are spent gathering data and lining up the people we need to hear from, so the sooner finance can send a general ledger export, the sooner everything downstream moves.

Question 4

What does it cost?

Accepted Answer

One fixed bid for the hundred days, quoted before we start, sized on your revenue, spend, category count and country footprint. The cost of the outside expertise we bring in is inside the number; travel and specialist partner work are passed through at cost, and we tell you which is which. We do not publish a figure because any single number would be wrong for most companies reading it. One call about the shape of your spend and you get a real one.

Question 5

What if we hire someone during the engagement?

Accepted Answer

Good, bring them in. The best outcome of a hundred days is a person on your side who owns this permanently, and they will start with the spend already mapped, the opportunities already ranked and the workflows already built. We will hand off everything we have learned.

Question 6

How do you work with our existing team?

Accepted Answer

For the back half of the engagement a procurement engineer works alongside your people, in whatever tools they already use. How much we run versus how much we teach depends on the team we find: we can run the sourcing events, run them with your people, or coach your people through them. The more we run the fewer we cover; the more we teach the more ground you get.

Question 7

What do you not do?

Accepted Answer

No legal redlining, no AP or invoice payment, and no inventory management. We focus on sourcing, negotiation, supplier management, renewals, and sourcing projects. For legal review on contracts, we will partner you with outside counsel when you need it.

Question 8

What does the hundred days actually look like?

Accepted Answer

Roughly fifteen days gathering data and lining up the people we need to hear from, fifteen analyzing the spend and what they told us together, ten converging on the few opportunities worth doing and agreeing them in a recorded session with your leadership, then about sixty working those plans with your team. Real sourcing events, not a pilot.

Question 9

How is this different from a big consulting firm?

Accepted Answer

The method is not the part we changed. The same three legs a serious procurement study has always run on are all here: your spend data mapped properly, outside expertise in your categories, and the perspective of your own people. What changed is the cost structure and the ending. The analysis the big firms charge seven figures for runs in weeks rather than quarters, and instead of handing you a deck on the last day we spend the back half of the engagement capturing the value with your team.

Question 10

What happens after day 100?

Accepted Answer

Day 100 is a decision point, not an exit. Some teams take it from here with the plans and the workflows we leave behind. Some keep a procurement engineer on, because the opportunities we did not reach in the first hundred days are still worth money. And some ask us to run more of the function rather than coach it. All three are fine with us, and none of them are a condition of the first hundred days being worth doing.

Question 11

What is a spend diagnostic?

Accepted Answer

A structured analysis of your purchasing data, typically one to three years of accounts payable and general ledger records, turned into a spend cube that shows exactly where money goes across categories, suppliers and business units. On its own it is half the picture, which is why we run it alongside expert and company perspective. The output is a short list of ranked opportunities with dollar values attached, not a data dump.

Question 12

How long does the analysis take before we see anything?

Accepted Answer

The first readout lands about thirty days in, once the spend is mapped and we have heard from the people who know why the numbers look the way they do. Day 40 is a working session with your leadership where the opportunity list gets agreed rather than presented. Everything after that is execution.

Question 13

What if the hundred days does not find enough to justify itself?

Accepted Answer

Then we will tell you that early rather than at the end, and we would rather find out in the first two weeks than the last two. It is a fair question to ask on the first call, because the honest answer depends on the shape of your spend: if most of what you buy is already competitively sourced and well governed, say so and we will tell you straight whether we think there is a case.

Question 14

Can you work across multiple portfolio companies?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and this is where the work is most powerful. Running it across a portfolio reveals opportunities no single company can see: shared vendors, volume aggregation and best-practice transfer. We report at both the individual company and the portfolio level.

Question 15

What data do you need to get started?

Accepted Answer

Accounts payable data and general ledger records, typically a CSV or Excel export from your ERP or accounting system. Two to three years of history is ideal. Most companies can pull this in a day. If you are not sure what you have, we will help you figure it out on the discovery call.

Question 16

Do we need to change any of our processes?

Accepted Answer

Not to work with us. We operate inside your workflows, your tools and your approval chains. The changes we recommend are the ones the diagnostic earns, and they arrive with a plan and a business case rather than as a condition of getting started.

Question 17

How do you handle sensitive purchases and our data?

Accepted Answer

With complete discretion and professional standards. Vendor and pricing data is handled in confidence, we run the sensitive conversations ourselves, and NDAs are available on request.

Question 18

What happens to our data when the engagement ends?

Accepted Answer

Your data is your data. Whenever you want it back, we give it to you. No lock-in, no hoarding, no clawback. The spend model and the workflows we build are yours to keep and keep running.

We are building what we wanted on the other side of the table.

You do not have to predict the future

The data is always a mess

Breadth used to be the constraint

Judgment did not get cheaper

Trevor McCawon LinkedIn

Jim Williamson LinkedIn

Start with one company.