It’s no secret that UK public-sector spending is big news. With a newly elected government announcing plans to cut spending by £6bn, the debate has been raging ever since over the effectiveness and role of procurement and procurement outsourcing in achieving the targets.

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A recent post on the Financial Times blog reflected that the IT outsourcing industry is seeking a new direction following the economic crisis. Given the shifts that are going on it’s a sharp observation, but that’s not the half of it.

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“Companies are still overlooking their main opportunity to streamline further without impacting headcount”, says Guy Stafford, client director at procurement specialists BuyingTeam. If that hasn’t got your attention, then you’re probably in the minority that are comfortable with their services procurement spend.

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As chief executive of procurement technology company Emptoris, Patrick Quirk has had a manic time since joining the organisation on 1 October this year. Central to his vision is to put his customers at the centre of its growth and development plan, so true to his word, Quirk has been out on the road meeting his customers and discussing their needs. 120 of them. In 85 days.

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In this latest guest post, Rosie Doggett, co-founder of RD Squared, analyses the UK government Central Office of Information's ten-step process for assessing the return of investment of public-sector advertising and marketing spend.

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A guest post earlier this week, written by Ralph Daniel of Third i Marketing, points to a recent study conducted by Advertising Age magazine and how it discovered that fewer than one in ten marketing procurers have experience in marketing. It wasn’t particularly scientific work, comprising of looking through the LinkedIn profiles of marketing procurement folk. Neither did it satisfactorily address the more important question of whether marketing experience is actually something that those who buy marketing services should have. I would argue not, Advertising Age would no doubt disagree.

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A post on this blog from earlier this year looked at how procurement and advertising agendas can be aligned. It sparked a fair amount of debate and illustrated well the gap between the two. Another article has been written - this time looking into the LinkedIn profiles of marketing procurers. In this guest post, Ralph Daniel of Third i Marketing offers his thoughts.

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It would seem that marketing procurement is currently on the agenda - it wasn't too long ago that we reported on marketing agency WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell's comments on how procurement was responsible for a drop in profits at his company. So I probably shouldn't have been surprised to come across another interesting article - this time in Media Week - which ponders the troublesome question of the relationship between procurement and creatives - simplistic cost cutters versus fluffy money wasters...

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One word which Nicolas Reinecke, expert principal at McKinsey, used to describe the category was "schizophrenic" - his reasoning being that the category is small (in terms of value and potential for cost savings) but big (in terms of its political and emotional impact and the attention it receives) at the same time.

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If there's one thing that has resisted the impact of procurement's influence more than most over the past few years, it's marketing spend. Still an intangible spend area in many businesses, marketing directors also enjoy a position of power, as well as a certain influence over most CEOs.

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