5 Tips to Help Prevent and Control Maverick Spend

Being a maverick isn’t all bad. Just look at Steve Jobs and Sir Richard Branson. Their outside-the-box ideas drove innovation and resulted in enormous successes. But for companies trying to manage spend – and let’s be honest, who isn’t? – rules-are-meant-to-be-broken behaviors such as maverick spend can wreak havoc on processes and, ultimately, your company’s bottom line. The upside is that it creates opportunities for procurement managers to re-evaluate processes, identify shortfalls and tighten spend gaps. But if left unchecked, it can – and will – end up costing your company money in the long run.

What is Maverick Spend?

Maverick spend is defined as buying from suppliers without following the company’s pre-established procurement policy. Purchasing goods or services out of contract or from non-preferred suppliers means that your company doesn’t benefit from the preferred supplier discounts that you worked hard to negotiate. Even worse, it can harm vendor relationships, affect future contract terms and open the door for underhanded business practices.

So why do employees “go rogue” and, more importantly, how can you stop it?

Here are five tips to maverick-proof your procurement processes.

1. Identify maverick spend.

Spend visibility is key. After all, you can’t save or fix what you can’t see. Do you know how much maverick spend costs your company? Or the work areas and spend categories where non-conformity occurs? A thorough spend analysiscan help you identify gaps across all spend data sources. From there, you can pinpoint the who, what and where and put an action plan into place.

2. Determine why maverick spend occurs.

Most employees don’t “go rogue” on purpose or with ill intent. They simply may not understand the procurement process. Or they may find it cumbersome and time consuming. eProcurement softwarecan be intimidating, especially to employees who don’t use it regularly. Or they may see better prices elsewhere, not understanding the costs associated with invoice and payment processing or expense reimbursement.

Whatever the reason, regular efforts to explain the “why” and share the value can go a long way in gaining buy-in. Consider hosting (bring your own) lunch and learn sessions, recognizing outstanding department or individual accomplishments, and providing a forum for employees to recommend vendors and give feedback.

3. Review the entire procurement process.

If you find your procurement process difficult, simplify with a more user-friendly solution. There are a lot of affordable and easy-to-use automated eProcurement options on the market.

The key is to find a solution that’s easy to use and all-inclusive (one that sees all direct and indirect spend) that integrates with your enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. This ensures that all employees have access to the right information at the right time.

4. Hold people accountable for their expenses.

While creating processes is your job, spend management is everyone’s responsibility. Every manager in your organization should know exactly what’s being spent in his or her area, who’s spending it, and how much spend occurs outside of contract or supplier network.

If you have a coupon at home for Papa John’s pizza, you’re probably not going to order Domino’s and pay full price. While a simplistic example, the same holds true at work. It just may be that employees don’t know what discounts exist or aren’t being held accountable for purchase price variances.

5. Close the gaps in your procurement process.

Additional measures to consider to reign in maverick spend include:

1. Limiting or eliminating P-card use to only certain vendors, merchant categories and / or dollar amounts. P-card usage can be difficult to monitor and measure which is why some companies are eliminating use altogether.
2. Limiting who can set up new vendors. Do you have a well-defined process for onboarding new suppliers? If not, you should.
3. C-level review of all non-contract or outside supplier network spend.

In the end, maverick spend and not playing by the procurement rules costs organizations BIG money. By digging deeper into the purchasing experience and the challenges and frustrations your employees encounter, you’ll better understand why maverick spend occurs, where it happens most often and, most importantly, what solutions you should implement to stop it.