How to run a procurement diagnostic in ten weeks

Why most diagnostics disappoint

Three failures recur. The diagnostic is built from interviews and existing presentations, so it restates what the organisation already believes. The value case is a single headline number nobody in Finance will sign, so the roadmap has no sponsor. And it takes six months, by which time the people who commissioned it have moved on. A diagnostic is useful when it is factual, signed and fast.

OREDJA runs it from the data in the systems, with a partner on site, and treats the value case as a document Finance co-authors rather than receives.

Weeks 1 to 2: the data, not the slides

The first two weeks are spent getting extracts, not opinions. The interviews start in parallel, across sites and functions, but the fact base is built from five sources.

• A spend cube from purchase orders and invoices over 24 to 36 months, mapped to one taxonomy across sites, with the share of spend under contract and under purchase order.
• Process-mining extracts for Procure-to-Pay: requisition, approval, order, receipt, invoice and payment events with timestamps, to measure touch points, rework, cycle time and first-time match.
• A contract inventory: what exists, where it is stored, what it covers, when it expires, and whether prices paid can be compared with prices contracted.
• Supplier master data and performance records: active suppliers by category and site, qualification status, delivery and quality performance where it is measured.
• The KPI inventory: which indicators are reported today, by whom, from which source, and whether Finance recognises the savings they claim.

Weeks 3 to 6: facts, baseline and value case

With the data in hand, the diagnostic turns it into a baseline and a value case, lever by lever, and launches the first quick wins while the analysis is still running.

• Category positioning by value and risk, with the sourcing history and the supplier concentration of each category.
• Procure-to-Pay findings from the mining: where requisitions bypass the system, where approvals stall, which exceptions dominate, how much manual work sits in the routine.
• Contract coverage and leakage: spend off contract, price revisions accepted without recomputation, expiries coming without a sourcing plan.
• Maturity assessment against a practical reference model covering strategy and governance, category management, sourcing, supplier management, Source-to-Pay execution, control and data.
• Value case by lever, stated as ranges with the assumptions written next to each figure, reviewed with Finance before it is presented to leadership.
• Quick wins launched during the diagnostic: a price revision recomputed, an expiring contract renegotiated, an approval threshold corrected.

Weeks 7 to 10: the target operating model and the roadmap

The design phase answers one question: what should the operating model be, and what will run it? It is designed with the people who will own it and validated in workshops with executive leadership.

• Procurement mandate and category governance: what procurement is accountable for, who owns each category, with which review rhythm.
• Decision rights by category and value: who specifies, who sources, who awards and who signs, so that decisions are taken once.
• KPI framework: OREDJA’s partners have worked with more than 75 procurement KPIs across twelve areas, and select the set each organisation needs, from executive dashboard to category scorecard.
• Platform blueprint: which Source-to-Pay modules, configured to the process, in which order, with which owner.
• AI use-case portfolio: where agents and models will earn their place first, each designed as a decision with an owner, a threshold and a fallback, with the data foundation plan that makes it possible.
• Roadmap by wave, with the value case attached to each wave and the organisation and competence plan that sustains it.

What leadership receives

Four documents: the fact base and baseline KPIs, the value case by lever with its assumptions, the target operating model and organisation, and the roadmap by wave. Each is written to be run, not filed, and each is already known to Finance and the site teams before it reaches the executive committee.

At a European water utility, the diagnostic showed that two decades of contracts had never been read together. The first sourcing wave that followed, prepared from a contract base structured by an AI reading layer and validated by buyers, delivered 8% savings on the categories in scope, validated by Finance against the utility’s own baseline, with sourcing preparation time halved.