Your fastest-growing cost line is also your least managed.

Over the past 20 years, companies have squeezed out most of their cost optimization potential, especially in production and direct materials. This is where the economic crisis and cost pressure hit hardest.

The good news: there is still vast hidden savings potential in your organization. Services are the fastest-growing spend category in most companies. At the same time, they are the most under-managed cost block.

Services are usually bought directly by demand owners, bypassing established procurement processes. Not because procurement doesn’t want to be involved, but because an email or a phone call is simply faster. As a result, procurement lacks the capacity and involvement to generate savings.

Our software, apadua, changes that. With AI automation, we speed up services sourcing by a factor of 10. This allows procurement to cover far more of the strategic services spend, while stakeholders manage their own spend in a compliant and transparent way.

With more spend under control, more savings can be achieved. Today, we measure 12 to 19% savings across all services categories. With services making up 5 to 15% of revenue, that is up to 3% of revenue going straight to the bottom line, every year.