Strengthening supplier negotiation on a strategic category

A major retail chain specialising in home improvement, the company entrusts its category managers with both range building and the supplier relationship. Negotiation, however, is becoming a continuous exercise, and the buying teams are reaching the limits of their capacity.

The procurement leadership wants to test a new model: mandating an external expert on high-stakes negotiations, starting with a targeted product family, to inform its thinking on the function's target organisation.

An interim manager, a highly experienced head of procurement, works for 9 months part time, around two days a week in a hybrid format. He identifies the priority scopes with the teams, prepares each negotiation (cost structures, currencies, freight, supplier profitability, quantified mandates), leads the meetings in tandem with the category managers and then autonomously on the pricing side, and verifies that the conditions obtained are actually applied, with regular reporting to procurement leadership.