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3 out of 4 marketers aren’t partnering with their procurement teams - why? 

CMO Council and KPMG set out to get to the bottom of this missed opportunity in our latest report, Smart Spending at Speed .

After the report was released, we teamed up with marketing and procurement leaders from Commvault and HP to dive into actionable steps teams can take to bridge the gap between these two departments in our webinar, Marketing’s Best Kept Secret: Sourcing . We found that teams partnering with procurement also have stronger relationships with other departments as well - finance, sales and more. Is this a by-product of alignment with procurement, or are these marketers simply more agreeable to work with? Ayen Martin of HP states, “Procurement can see the broader picture, which allows us to create a crossover that benefits multiple departments when done effectively - not just one. We’re always working in the background to create a complete package. We work closely with marketing to create a truly collaborative process from start to finish.” 

The key to faster cycle times and efficient reporting is getting aligned with procurement, which doesn’t come as a surprise. This teamwork enables teams to save tons of money, which is a game-changer for our ever-dwindling marketing budgets. 

Isabelle Guis of Commvault adds, “A big key for our team is to identify the need and strive to understand it. It’s about people and working with people.” No matter what your team needs to get done, building strong cross-functional relationships is crucial for getting where you need to be. As the old adage goes - if you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, go together.

Download our report Smart Spending at Speed here.

Guis continues by saying that over a third of CRM projects fail and the main reason is a lack of alignment. “It takes a village to make change happen,” she says. Constructive feedback is a major component of creating community-minded relationships with different departments. HP’s Tara Agen says that their teams actively invite feedback from other departments on ways to improve processes. By making each member of the team feel empowered to provide feedback in both formal and informal capacities, they create healthy relationships throughout the organization that better fit each department’s individual needs.

Many marketers feel that procurement doesn’t understand them at all, lending to the nearly 75% of marketers that don’t have a functional relationship with the department. Through active collaboration and a people-first mindset, leaders across all departments can create more meaningful relationships with their peers and get things done more effectively. After all, marketing’s best-kept secret is sourcing.