The best way to improve indirect spend management is to go to leadership not only with concerns but also with proposed solutions.

Category managers spend their days in a whirlwind of activity, attempting to manage indirect spend categories while processing purchase orders, reviewing invoices, resolving discrepancies, and making sure spending aligns with policies.

If you fill this mission-critical role within your organization, then you can relate. With everything on your plate, the sheer volume and complexity of indirect expenses means they often slip into autopilot mode. In other words, no one is actively managing them, which means suppliers are winning. With only so many hours in the day, many teams lack the resources available to help them optimize complex indirect costs—instead, available time must be spent on larger critical expenses.

This lack of oversight creates a breeding ground for:

• Cost overruns that negatively impact P&L and business performance
• Post-contract profit hikes from suppliers who find ways to grow their margins after paperwork is signed
• Missed opportunities to negotiate supplier terms and pricing
• Non-compliant spending that doesn’t align with policies or regulations
• Poor visibility into spend data, including opportunities for spend reduction

Meanwhile, your department’s leaders are busy, too. Because they focus on the bigger picture—things like long-term strategic planning, policy and procedure development, and team leadership—they don’t often delve into the details of indirect procurement.

This means it’s your job to bring issues to light when you notice them so they can be addressed. (Otherwise, how will your boss know there’s a problem?) The best way to make progress is to go to leadership not only with concerns but also with proposed solutions. For many teams, effectively managing indirect expenses means working with a trusted third party for help. This lets you focus on the bigger issues while they work to optimize complex indirect costs.

Indirect Procurement: 7 Steps to Making Your Case for Improvement

Here are some well-established tips to help you present your case for adopting Fine Tune—plus a letter to tweak and share with your boss that summarizes your pitch. By following these suggestions, you can emerge as the hero who helped unlock funds previously tied up by facilities management, utilities, uniforms, waste, security, or pest control so that they can go toward strategic investments instead.

1. Quickly explain the purpose of the conversation: There’s a problem, but you found a practical solution.
2. Walk through the problem using real examples of what’s happening with indirect procurement categories and the impacts on the business in terms of lost time, out-of-control expenses, etc. Bring numbers that illustrate your point.
3. Share specific instances of discrepancies between what original supplier contracts stipulate and what vendors are actually delivering and charging today. (We call these "good contracts, bad deals.")
4. Explain the vetting you’ve done to find a solution to help your team not only track but also act on indirect spend issues. Explain how the solution addresses the concerns you’ve shared.
5. Describe the expected outcomes from using a solution like Fine Tune. These could include improved tracking, increased control, risk mitigation, etc.
6. Show a cost-benefit analysis and the potential return on investment (ROI).
7. Close the conversation by answering questions and making plans to continue the discussion.

Your Template to Encourage Open Dialogue about Indirect Spend Management

If you’re ready to have a conversation with your boss about Fine Tune, here’s some verbiage you can use as a starting point. Feel free to copy and paste the language and modify it as needed. Or you can download the text in a document format here.

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<<Boss’ First Name>>,

When it comes to indirect spend management, our team is facing substantial challenges. We work with lean resources and mounting to-do lists, which means we don’t have resources that help us monitor and manage complex indirect costs as closely as our company’s direct costs. Instead, our time is focused on larger critical expenses.

Meanwhile, indirect expenses become more difficult to control. This has made our organization vulnerable to vendor issues like scope creep, hidden fees and charges, and degradation in service quality. These all add up to cost overruns that negatively impact our bottom line and our efficiency.

We don’t want our vendors to have the upper hand, but we also don’t have time to constantly negotiate and manage interactions, terms, and conditions. We found a solution called Fine Tune that can track and act on these issues. Fine Tune addresses our specific problems and can help us regain control over our indirect spend management. Here’s why:

1. They understand our industry, as well as our suppliers’ industries and cost models. Fine Tune can secure optimal costs across our products, services, and ancillary fees. They can also uncover huge opportunities and act on them when needed.
2. They offer a comprehensive expense management tool to track costs and manage complex indirect categories efficiently.
3. They constantly engage in the “joust” with our suppliers to protect our bottom line by negotiating and managing interactions, terms, and conditions.

Implementation is straightforward, and Fine Tune offers extensive support, training, and resources to ensure a smooth transition.

I believe this is a smart financial decision for our team and our organization; the long-term benefits of finally reining in our indirect spend will far outweigh upfront costs. I’d like to talk about next steps to introduce you to the solution and what it can do for us.

<<Your Name>>