It’s time for a revolution in marketing procurement. A transformation from savings to value, which can rid the profession of bad practice and reduce the number of opportunities for negative articles about the discipline.

Evolving perceptions, however, also requires changes in the way procurement works with its stakeholders inside and outside each company: evolution to procurement processes, improving people’s understanding of procurement, building new performance KPIs beyond just savings and involving external partners to ensure a true perspective.

This report is designed to help everyone on that journey.

Based on a two year’s work of the WFA Global Sourcing Board and WFA Sourcing Forum, it has identified elements that can impact the perception of marketing procurement, as well the progress that has been made since WFA started to formally raise the topic within its network.

It identifies multiple initiatives being independently developed by WFA members to evolve their function and ensure it does not become obsolete, irrelevant or a barrier to business growth.

It is designed to inspire and end the “race to the bottom” that some marketing procurement practitioners are contributing towards; blindly cutting costs and reducing fees. It is not a route-map to perfect practice but the start of a journey.

As with any transformation, the drive to create a “value in” instead of “cost out” should never end.

Project Spring is a global sourcing initiative launched in 2018 and designed to transform the value proposition of marketing procurement.

The leadership comes from the WFA Sourcing Board, a group of highly experienced and forward-thinking executives who can create concrete actions and share world-class marketing procurement practices.

The vision for Project Spring and the Sourcing Board is that procurement should become the trusted partner of brand investment strategy and play its part in driving the business forward.

The roots of this movement lie in the WFA’s Sourcing Forum, which brings together more than 1300 global and regional marketing procurement experts in multiple meetings each year across three continents.