Acquis Case Study

Uncovering $3M+ in Savings through Procurement

Sometimes the biggest opportunities hide in plain sight. For this $17 billion global insurance leader, procurement had become an invisible function — but when leadership recognized that this approach left millions on the table, everything changed.

The Challenge

Funding transformation without expanding budgets

Senior leadership recognized that the organization was not structured for procurement success. The function remained reactive and tactical, lacking the strategic focus needed to drive value, resulting in millions in missed savings opportunities and untapped transformation capital across global operations.

For a global financial services organization operating multiple insurance businesses, this realization highlighted a significant opportunity. Despite sophisticated risk management capabilities, complex multi-segment operations, and a strong track record of shareholder value creation, the procurement function remained reactive rather than strategic.

The hidden cost of reactive procurement

The organization operated through a decentralized model with business units managing procurement independently across North America, Europe, and Australia. The typical process for major purchases — whether $1 million in software or corporate payment contracts — followed a reactive pattern:

Business units conducted vendor research, negotiations, and contract development independently. Procurement became involved only after teams negotiated agreements with a single directive: process the transaction.

This approach limited procurement to administrative tasks rather than strategic value creation. Most significantly, it prevented the function from generating savings that could fund broader transformation initiatives.

The inflection point

Leadership recognized a critical opportunity: if procurement could identify and capture just a fraction of the value being left on the table across global operations, the savings could be reinvested into the company’s strategic initiatives without budget increases.

However, leadership needed to validate this approach.

The Solution

Procurement funded transformation

With the challenge clearly defined, leadership sought a solution that could deliver both immediate value and strategic capabilities. The organization chose Acquis based on its compelling proposition: strategic procurement that funds transformation.

Acquis' phased methodology promised both immediate value and long-term capability building, powered by its proprietary savings modeler and the Ignite Analytics Platform. Based on this approach, the firm guaranteed a minimum of $600,000 in savings.

The 12-month engagement began with the simple but ambitious goal to prove that strategic procurement could not only achieve the $600K goal, justify the investment, and generate enough savings to fund the firm’s larger strategic plans.

The Solution

Multi-phased methodology

Phase 1: making the invisible visible

Within days, Acquis' Ignite Analytics Platform provided comprehensive visibility into global spend patterns across business units and geographies. For the first time, the organization could see exactly where money was going and identify optimization opportunities at scale. This visibility became the foundation for transforming procurement from a reactive function into a strategic source of transformation capital.

Phase 2: the $3 million revelation

The opportunity modeling phase delivered significant results. Advanced analytics revealed over $3 million in addressable savings opportunities. This wasn't theoretical — the analysis incorporated procurement maturity, market dynamics, and organizational constraints to generate realistic, achievable projections. The original $600,000 target suddenly seemed conservative.

Phase 3: building the coalition

The most critical phase involved extensive stakeholder engagement across business units. Through workshops and consultations, Acquis identified not just where to save money, but how to do it without disrupting business relationships or operations. This process built the organizational consensus essential for sustainable change while ensuring that savings could be captured and reinvested strategically.

Phase 1: making the invisible visible

Phase 2: the $3 million revelation

Phase 3: building the coalition

The Solution

Execution and results

The results exceeded all expectations. By month three of the 12-month engagement, Acquis surpassed the team’s original $600,000 goal. However, the most significant breakthrough came from an unexpected source.

While the team anticipated savings from competitive sourcing and vendor consolidation, the single largest win came from something much simpler — renegotiating an existing corporate payment contract.

Acquis analyzed the organization's current agreement with its payment processing vendor and discovered the terms were dramatically below market standards. Instead of running a full competitive process, the team simply renegotiated the existing contract, resulting in over $1 million in savings without changing vendors or disrupting operations.

This single contract renegotiation exceeded the entire original savings target in weeks and demonstrated how strategic procurement expertise could unlock transformation capital.

The expansion decision

After exceeding its $600,000 goal, the company made a pivotal decision to expand the program across all OPEX categories and geographies. What began as a pilot became a comprehensive transformation.

By year-end, total savings exceeded $3 million — more than five times the original target. Each dollar saved represented capital available for strategic reinvestment without expanding operational budgets.

The Transformation

Reactive to strategic procurement

The success created a fundamental shift in how the organization approached procurement. Business units that once made independent vendor decisions began engaging procurement early in the process. The conversation changed from "process this paperwork" to "help us optimize this opportunity."

By shaping the decisions instead of simply responding to them, procurement shifted from reactive to proactive, helping the company to realize millions in savings and fund its larger transformation goals.

Building for the future

Acquis delivered savings and the organizational capability to sustain and expand those results. In an effort to develop the firm’s internal procurement function, Acquis created comprehensive job descriptions, established market-competitive salary ranges, supported hiring decisions, and provided templates and processes for ongoing success.

The procurement function now leads strategic initiatives that drive value creation, improving vendor relationships, optimizing contract terms, and enhancing market intelligence that creates ongoing competitive advantages that extend far beyond the original investment.

The bottom line

Sometimes the biggest transformations start with recognizing what hides in plain sight. For this global financial services leader, acknowledging that procurement was purely reactive became the catalyst for discovering $3+ million in hidden value, enabling the company to reinvest these savings into its strategic transformation goals.

The experience highlights that strategic procurement isn't just about cost reduction — it's about unlocking hidden transformation opportunities. When organizations invest in making the invisible visible, the results can exceed every expectation.

For companies wondering whether procurement transformation can truly fund organizational transformation, this experience provides compelling proof: the value is there, waiting to be discovered. The question isn't whether it exists — it's whether you're ready to find it.

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