Some time back I was invited to conduct a strategic procurement review of how an organisation was managing part of their indirect spend.

It was a fragmented portfolio. Site managers had been coordinating their own contracts for years. I was told they were happy with how things were running. They believed the contracts were working well.

It did not take much digging to find the same supplier charging different rates at different sites, including within the same geographic area.

Nobody had noticed. Nobody had time for supplier relationship management.