Why procurement professionals prefer market-led strategies

What is a market-led strategy?

Market-led strategies create an environment where supply and demand interact smoothly, ensuring transparency for buyers and fairness for suppliers.

It is especially well-suited for indirect procurement, an area that is often overlooked or less adequately staffed. Leveraging platforms with market-driven processes is recommended to harness competitive advantages, while preserving control and transparency.

This approach includes:

• Multi-supplier sourcing: buyers access a wide range of vetted suppliers while maintaining supplier neutrality. 

• Buyer-focused experience: advanced search tools cater to buyer preferences including ways to track CO2 reporting, ensuring compliant procurement without sacrificing speed or flexibility. 

• Streamlined supplier management: a single creditor model simplifies the complexity of managing multiple suppliers, reducing process costs. 

Which is why market-led strategies was an eagerly anticipated topic of discussion at the recently concluded Digital Procurement World (DPW) in Amsterdam.

DPW panel discussion:

During a panel led by Unite Board Member Christel Constant, procurement leaders from Bertrandt and Arkema shared valuable insights into the versatility of Unite’s platform in their respective organisations.

The discussion reiterated how the Unite platform, with its market-led approach, can be easily adapted, offering both centralised control and decentralised flexibility, depending on organisational needs.

What stood out: 

It’s interesting that Bertrandt leverages Unite for framework agreements and catalogue-based procurement, streamlining supplier management and optimising indirect procurement across its 50 global sites. By benchmarking the prices in its framework agreements against marketplace alternatives, Bertrandt adopts market-led strategies to secure competitive pricing and drive cost optimisation.

While on the other hand, Arkema has implemented a ‘buyerless procurement’ strategy, using the same platform to decentralise purchasing across its business lines while maintaining compliance and visibility.

So, rather than navigating competing channels – such as the marketplace versus framework agreements – the Unite platform provides an integrated view that mitigates the common issue of siloed management in traditional e-procurement systems. Unite provides compliant purchasing from buyer’s framework agreements and supplier catalogues side by side with its integrated marketplace assortment, all under a single contract, contact, and creditor. It enhances collaboration and efficiency, enabling organisations to manage agreements more effectively, leverage procurement resources, and drive supplier consolidation for stronger negotiation power.

Arkema’s buyerless procurement

With over 21,000 employees worldwide, this chemical company has embraced a buyerless procurement strategy by decentralising purchasing decisions. With Unite’s platform, Arkema enables individual business lines to make direct purchases while maintaining oversight and compliance.

As Zafer Girisit, Head of Operations and Purchasing Coordination EMEA at Arkema, highlighted: “Unite gives requesters access to suppliers, while allowing us to track activity and ensure compliance across our global operations.”

Achieve ESG goals with a market-led approach

Sustainability is a growing concern for procurement leaders. According to a fourth edition of the EY’s ‘long-term value and corporate governance’ survey, “boards have a duty to help reinforce a business culture where sustainability is seen as mission critical”.

With new EU regulations expected to come into effect in stages, including the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), and some regulations already in place, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), businesses are making changes in their sustainability governance capabilities.

A surefire way to ensure such capabilities is through market-driven solutions that build transparency into supplier credentials and carbon footprints. There are tools to enable companies to make informed decisions, fostering competition among suppliers to meet high sustainability standards

Unite's platform directly addresses this with a CO2 reporting tool that helps businesses visualise carbon footprint on purchases. This makes it easy to comply with sustainability reporting standards like the GHG Protocol Scope 3 and the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive.

Christel Constant, Executive Board Member at Unite, explained further: “Unite gives procurement professionals the tools to assess suppliers based on sustainability criteria, helping organisations meet their ESG targets.”