Category Management Explained

Category Management in purchasing (not to be confused with retail category management) is a strategic approach that focuses on the vast majority of an organisation's spend on goods and services with third party suppliers. It is the practice of segmenting the main areas of spend into discreet groups of products and services according to their function and crucially how the supply markets are organised.

If well executed Category Management can add dramatic value improvement in terms of reduced price but can also deliver reduced cost and risk, increased innovation, brand value, greater effectiveness and a stronger competitive position. It can make a clear contribution to the bottom line or EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization) and can also make a solid contribution to share-holder equity.

Enabling Category Management in your business

We have extensive experience of making Category Management happen in organisations. The Positive Purchasing 5i Category Management methodology represents best practice strategic purchasing with proven results and can help to add dramatic value to your organisation: 

How we can help

Category Management Methodology - Common process, common language and common ways of working across the organisation are essential for success. Using the proven 5i® Category Management approach we can deploy and embed the process and supporting tools and templates across your organisation making them available to all either using your internal systems or through our Online Academy.

Category Management Training - A range of inspirational category management training courses for practitioners, stakeholders or senior managers to uplift capability. Training is based around the 5i® Category Management process or can be fully customised to your orgnisation and ways of working. We can also integrate  training workshops with teams working on realtime category projects and assist in generating key outputs. Category Management training is available as classroom events for your team, public courses or online. More.  

Governance  - Category Management rarely happens on its own, so good governance is essential. We will work with your senior team to establish a suitable governance framework; providing the tools and reporting needed to measure results, secure buy-in and lend support across the business.

To find out how we can enable Category Management in your organisation  contact us or  email us, or call +44 (0) 845 331 3312 or +44 (0) 1762 827969.