Looking Beyond Centralized and Decentralized Procurement

Many organizations have adopted a centralized structure for their procurement functions in an effort to streamline purchasing efforts and take advantage of bulk pricing. To determine whether organizations with centralized procurement structures are at an advantage over organizations with decentralized procurement functions, APQC compared the procurement performance of these two groups.

The results indicate that, overall, organizations with centralized procurement functions have only a slight advantage over organizations with decentralized procurement.