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WFA launches marketing procurement benchmark service

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is launching a procurement benchmarking service that will enable clients to assess their maturity level of marketing procurement.

The aim of the service is to showcase the value that procurement brings to marketing organisations, as well as giving companies a benchmark to assess what level they are at and which areas could be improved.

It focuses on the benefits of collaborating with marketing teams and agency partners and aims to dispel some of the criticism surrounding the role of the procurement.

The service will require brands to complete an online survey to test both the sophistication of their procurement team as well as the organisational readiness of the company as a whole to embrace potential improvement that such practices can provide.

Results will provide each company with a measure of its marketing procurement maturity, assessing its current approach to effective and efficient management of marketing activities compared to both the ideal and current best practice, as well as identifying skills and resources they need to develop across both marketing and procurement.

The benchmarking service, which is being offered in conjunction with London-based consultancy Spire, is available to both members and non-members.

The launch of the service was based on two waves of research using data from 45 multinational brands with a total marketing spend of approximately $60bn globally.

Compared with a first wave of research in 2010, the effectiveness and efficiency of sourcing teams has increased marginally with 5% more ‘good or excellent’ performance scores.  The biggest improvements have come from better money management and improvements in finding and working with the best suppliers, with clear gains in 2012 compared with 2010.

Although it varies by category, the most advanced performers have higher levels of centralisation of spend management. Across 18 key categories of marketing spend, there was significantly great centralisation among the best performing countries.

“There are many misperceptions around the level of marketing procurement maturity,” says WFA global marketing procurement senior manager Steve Lightfoot. “This research shows that while different capability levels exist in the marketing sourcing space, the best-in-class teams are really excelling. Our aim is to help all sourcing teams move along a maturity path to ensure that this function continues to deliver value to the business that includes, but goes beyond, cost targets. We aim to model this development over time and offer a global benchmark for marketing procurement excellence.”

Jenni Baker, London