Chapter 8.1
The business case for smarter procurement
Every company has its own priorities, often reflecting the sectors you work in and growth ambitions.
For larger projects like data centres, hospitals, or highways, the focus is on control and risk management. For faster jobs in the fitout sector, It’s all about speed and productivity - get in, get out. For growth companies it’s about scalability. And for people-centric business, it’s staff satisfaction, recruitment and retention ability.
No matter your slant, there’s a mechanism to help you rationalise the case for digital procurement (which is a no-brainer).
Ultimately, how you operate shapes client experience, and reflects your brand.
Time savings - rationalised
Here’s the maths:
10 projects/year × 40 trades per project × 40 hours / trade = 16,000 hours spend procuring
Driving 50% productivity gains 8,000 hours, being ~4 FTEs.
See the breakdown, and tailor to your business.
Risk reduction – rationalised
How much money do scope gaps, pricing mistakes, delays, missing or contract or poor decision cost you each year?
Procurement risk quietly erodes ~0.5 - 1.0% of revenue.
For a $100m business, that’s $500k-$1m revenue leakage.
If making 3% margin, that’s 15–30% of profits disappearing.
Staff satisfaction – rationalised
How many commercial staff do you hire each year? Struggling to find them? And how much are you paying to recruiters?
For every 100 staff, typically 20 are commercial. With average staff attrition at 25%, you’re hiring 5-7 new commercial staff each year (not all work out, plus ramp time).
At $130k avg wage and 15% recruiter fees, this is $20k / hire, being $100-140k in recruiter fees. Plus the actual wages on top.
Save just one new recruit, and you’ve made the case.
Opportunity creation – rationalised
This can be trickier to quantify, but ask yourself this - if you saved 20 hours admin for each package procured, would you do more:
Value engineering?
Bulk purchasing across multiple projects?
Cross reference price benchmarking across projects?
Getting out on site, from behind the screen?
Then put your finger in the wind about how much this is worth to your business, brand, staff and clients.
Read the next chapter
8.2 – Digital procurement trends
Rapid market adoption in Australia sets the tone for global proliferation.
Prefer a hands-on approach?
Turn the playbook into action. In a short working session, we’ll map your tech, prioritise fixes, and leave you with a tailored impact plan.
