From reliance to resilience: why modern procurement uses consultants differently
While consulting as a service has long been positioned as a lever for problem-solving and speed, there’s growing pressure on providers to deliver more tangible, lasting value to their clients. In recent years, thought-leaders like McKinsey and Gartner have emphasized that consulting is no longer just about delivering answers — it’s about building the client’s ability to answer similar questions in the future. The pressure is on for consulting partners to embed capability, not just create dependency.
We’ve seen a noticeable rise in organizations using consultants not just as a stopgap for bandwidth, but as a tool for building internal strength — transferring knowledge, frameworks, and commercial thinking that outlast the engagement itself.
Procurement’s Role in This Shift
This evolution is especially visible within procurement teams aiming to move from traditional procurement to modern procurement. In the past, consultants were often brought in to run diagnostics, identify gaps, and deliver a plan — sometimes with client teams looped in only as the “C” or “I” in the RACI model. In today’s environment, that approach feels increasingly one-sided. Procurement leaders are now looking for engagements that go further: ones that equip their teams with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to operate at a higher level after the consultants have stepped away.
This shift has created both opportunity and discomfort. Many procurement leaders are rising to the challenge, eager to engage more strategically. But capability gaps still exist, especially in fast-moving categories like media, digital content, or retail media. That’s where consulting support can play a dual role — helping drive a specific project forward, while also raising the team’s fluency and confidence along the way.
A Smarter Role for Procurement
The transformation to a modern procurement organization goes beyond better tools or new templates — it’s about mindset. Modern procurement leaders are expected to spend less time solely focused on minimizing costs within a given category, and more time driving the value of that category forward.
In marketing, this means not just scrutinizing fee structures or media rates, but helping shape smarter scopes, more effective partnerships, and clearer paths to performance. It means showing up as a strategic ally to the CMO, not just a checkpoint for approvals.
This isn’t limited to marketing. In IT, facilities, travel, and other indirect categories, we see similar trends: procurement leaning into stakeholder collaboration, supplier enablement, and outcome-based thinking. It’s no longer about managing vendors — it’s about creating value.
That’s why capability building matters. When procurement invests in learning, not just savings, it earns a different seat at the table. And when external consultants are used not just to deliver — but to transfer knowledge in-house — those investments go further.
At RAUS Global, we believe procurement can — and should — become a strategic powerhouse, not a cost center. One that enables better decision-making, stronger governance, and ultimately, more sustainable growth.
Designing for capability from the start
One way we help clients shift from reliance to resilience is by building flexibility into the project model itself. From the outset of any engagement, we ask a simple but important question:
What’s your intention for your team’s role in this project?
We always offer two pathways:
- One where the client is a co-creator, with full access to our thinking, frameworks, and decision rationale.
- And another where the client team leads the strategic direction, while we develop the solution, provide the structure, tools, and commercial guardrails to drive the full execution.
By making this an upfront choice, we help our clients align the work with their internal development goals — whether that’s building confidence, knowledge, or leadership visibility.
In co-creation projects, our clients are brought into the core of the decision-making structure. We might align weekly on evaluation criteria, review agency performance together in live workshops, or adapt negotiation playbooks in real time. These teams walk away with the tools — and the thinking — that shaped them.
When clients prefer to own the strategic direction, we support them with frameworks that codify best practices while still leaving room for local or functional nuance. For instance, we might build a ready-to-use governance playbook with embedded contract red flags, a fee modeling calculator, or a performance dashboard linked to quarterly business reviews.
While some in the consulting world believe that intellectual property should be closely guarded to protect future revenue, we’ve seen the opposite hold true. Co-creation builds trust. Transparency builds momentum. And when clients feel genuinely supported — not sold to — they come back. Many of our most successful relationships have grown because clients know we’re there to help them lead, not to lead for them.
What This Means for Talent
The capability transfer model also unlocks something many procurement teams quietly struggle with: talent retention and engagement. Too often, high-potential procurement talent feels sidelined — especially when consultants take over projects that internal teams are eager to lead.
By contrast, when procurement is trusted to co-lead and shape the work, something shifts. Team members develop a deeper understanding of the category. They gain cross-functional visibility. And they build credibility not just with consultants, but with marketing, finance, and senior stakeholders.
That visibility matters. It helps procurement attract and retain people who want more than transactional work. It helps them build a bench of commercially minded professionals who can grow into broader roles. And it turns consulting engagements into training grounds — not talent risks.
We often hear from clients, months after a project ends, that a team member who co-led the work has gone on to lead a new region, taken over the agency relationship globally, or has been promoted into a more senor role. That kind of impact isn’t accidental — it’s the outcome of intentional collaboration and a commitment to capability building.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Capability transfer doesn’t require a full transformation program — it often starts with something small but intentional.
At RAUS Global, we’ve seen real impact when procurement teams bring us in not just to “fix” a commercial issue, but to help their team learn how to spot and solve similar challenges moving forward. For example:
- At a global wellness brand, marketing procurement led a complex global media pitch — but lacked experience at this scale. Rather than take over, we worked in lock-step with the procurement team, training them in real time. We supported the framing of agency asks, developed evaluation tools, and created governance guidelines to help the client retain leadership throughout the pitch and contract term. The team didn’t just complete the process — they built the confidence and structure to lead the commercial side of the agency relationship throughout the term of the contract and beyond. The team also built deep trust with both marketing and legal colleagues internally.
- During a reinvention at a major health company, we supported tactical audits on un-billed media and “floated fees” — but paired it with internal capability coaching. We shared frameworks the team could use to spot future leakage, align with marketing, and strengthen vendor negotiation preparation.
- With a U.S. DIY brand, our engagement focused on creating more commercial discipline within the marketing spend. Working alongside brand, finance, and retail leads, we helped marketing reframe agency relationships to better support omni-channel needs — especially in content and creative. Rather than just renegotiating terms, we worked with the internal team to embed stronger commercial language, refresh scopes of work, and co-develop a cadence of performance reviews. The result? Smarter spend, stronger internal alignment, and a team that could sustain the model without continued outside support.
These engagements aren’t large-scale reinventions. They’re designed with internal enablement in mind, and that makes all the difference.
When procurement owns the outcome — not just the output — the value is lasting.
The Opportunity Ahead
Procurement’s evolution is no longer theoretical — it’s already happening. The question is whether teams will choose to simply outsource expertise or intentionally build it. When clients lean into co-creation, when consultants are willing to share the playbook, and when capability is treated as a deliverable — not a byproduct — that’s when real transformation sticks.
At RAUS, we’ve seen the power of that approach. And we believe the most valuable thing we can leave behind isn’t just a successful project — it’s a stronger, more capable client team.
