SOURCING FORUM: 2015 Year in Review

Columnists quote pained agency executives burdened with yet another spreadsheet or e-auction. Yet the function has risen inexorably against the backdrop of a challenging global financial landscape and pressurised marketing budgets.Much of the work of this 600-strong network of sourcing professionals is focused on how best to deliver value to marketing stakeholders and the business as a whole. How can sourcing best address an evolving digital marketing supply base? How are remuneration models shifting towards performance? How to calibrate the right soft versus hard metrics in terms of procurement performance?

In parallel, members have come to WFA for help in understanding how best to deploy and increase resources against the different areas of marketing spend. The trend is indicative of a maturing function looking to get ever closer to owning all aspects of the financial relationship between client and agency.

In 2015 sessions have gone into detail on mapping category strategies, focusing on ad production, sponsorship and events.

Sessions in Shanghai and Singapore witnessed record attendances, proof of the appetite amongst the Asian sourcing community to learn from their peers.

2015 in numbers:

• SOURCINGFORUM is 10 years old


• 650 insights specialists in the global network, covering 95% of WFA’s corporate network


• Met 6 times in London, New York, Paris, Shanghai, Singapore, Zug


• 22 member-led best practice sessions


• 5 in-house member procurement briefings


• 134 members attended meetings


• 17 global marketing procurement benchmarks


• 5 category management surveys


• 3 global webinars

What will 2016 bring?

A future for marketing procurement? PepsiCo’s decision to disband its marketing procurement team sent ripples across the industry. Are more companies set to follow suit? The WFA experience suggests not with as many as 30% of brand owners currently hiring sourcing professionals. But the move may well indicate that the function needs to better demonstrate the value of marketing procurement to other internal stakeholders.

For more information, contact Steve.