Procurement consulting

Treat the contract as the deliverable, not a side effect.

Procurement consultants are brought in when a company is about to sign something larger than it has signed before, or when renewals have rolled for years. Say which buy, what a better deal means, and who still has to sign.

The contract is the deliverable

Name the category and the incumbent or the shortlist. Waste, software, a logistics contract, a professional-services panel. 'Procurement transformation' is a program. This proposal is a buy. The client should see the current annual spend if they will tell you, and what you will and will not count as savings.

Say whether you run the competition, negotiate the renewal, or only write the specification someone else will use. Those are different calendars. A proposal that says 'support the process' will be pulled into whichever one is on fire.

Who still has to sign

You do not sign. Write the name of the role that does, and the point at which you hand them a recommendation with the risks attached. Clients sometimes want a consultant so they can say the consultant chose. The proposal should make that impossible.

Legal review of the paper, implementation of the new supplier, and a saving that depends on a volume the client may not reach are outside the fee. Savings language should be careful: a lower unit price is not a saving if the scope grew to meet it.