Principais desafios para a transformação digital do setor de compras de consultoria: Você está liderando ou ficando para trás?

Let’s face it—consulting procurement isn’t what it used to be. The days of sifting through endless proposals and relying on gut instinct to select consultants are quickly fading. In today’s fast-evolving business landscape, sticking to traditional methods is like trying to win a race with a horse and buggy while everyone else is driving electric cars.

Digital transformation isn’t just a trend; it’s the competitive edge organizations need to stay ahead. For consulting procurement—often a complex maze of stakeholders, scattered processes, and tight budgets—going digital can mean the difference between lagging behind and leading the pack.

Here’s the kicker: implementing AI-powered tools, predictive analytics, and real-time reporting isn’t just about streamlining processes. It’s about making smarter decisions, cutting costs, and turning consulting from an expense into a strategic advantage. According to recent research, organizations leveraging digital tools in procurement have reduced costs by up to 40% while significantly improving outcomes.

So, where does your organization stand? Are you embracing the future of consulting procurement, or are you still trying to solve today’s challenges with yesterday’s tools? In this article, we’ll break down the challenges, solutions, and actionable steps to help you navigate the digital transformation journey.

Challenge 1: Scattered and Unclean Data—The Consulting Spend Dumping Ground

Ah, the consulting spend category—often treated like a junk drawer for anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere. Recently, we worked with a large organization, and guess what we found? Over 50% of what was allocated as “consulting” was actually engineering services, environmental projects, and (believe it or not) catering! It’s no surprise—consulting spend is rarely managed as a distinct category, which makes it a black hole for misplaced costs and unclean data.

If your consulting spend feels more like a mystery novel than a balance sheet, you’re not alone. But here’s the good news: cleaning up your data doesn’t have to be an impossible task. It’s all about combining the right tools, a clear taxonomy, and some strategic housekeeping.

Short-Term Fix: Start Cleaning the Data

• Roll up your sleeves and dig in: Identify misallocated costs and reassign them to the correct categories. This is about getting an accurate picture of what you’re actually spending on consulting versus everything else.
• Leverage technology: Use a spend analysis tool to automate categorization and uncover hidden trends. These tools make it easier to spot anomalies like catering charges sneaking into your consulting spend.

Medium-Term Strategy: Set Up Clear Processes and Taxonomy

• Define a clear taxonomy: Create a robust system to categorize consulting spend (and its subcategories) in a way that aligns with your business. Make it so intuitive that even the most harried project manager knows where to allocate costs.
• Evangelize your taxonomy: Think of this as an internal PR campaign. Hold workshops, share best practices, and make sure everyone understands why proper allocation matters—not just for procurement but for better decision-making across the board.

Long-Term Transformation: Build an Integrated Ecosystem

• Link your systems: Integrate your ERP, P2P (procure-to-pay), and spend analysis tools into a seamless digital ecosystem. This ensures data flows smoothly from procurement to payment, with minimal room for human error or misclassification.
• Design for the future: Implement processes that ensure clean data from the start. For example, set up automated compliance checks during procurement to validate spend allocations before they hit your system.
• Monitor and optimize: Treat your data as a living, breathing asset. Use AI-driven analytics to regularly audit and refine your spend categories.

Why It Matters

Clean data isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the foundation for everything else. Without a clear and accurate baseline, you’re essentially flying blind when it comes to making strategic decisions. For most companies, the stakes are even higher: performance recognition systems, including compensation and bonuses, are often tied directly to the n-1 baseline. If that baseline is riddled with errors, it skews everything from cost-saving targets to supplier negotiations.

But that’s not all. Clean data also enables effective category management, which is the backbone of strategic procurement. It allows you to answer the most critical questions: Who spends? How much? With whom? And for what? Once you have these answers, you can:

• Define meaningful subcategories that reflect your organization’s actual spending patterns.
• Prioritize subcategories based on spend volume, supplier concentration, or potential for savings.
• Identify and eliminate inefficiencies, like maverick spending or bloated supplier portfolios.

Ultimately, clean data is what allows you to transform consulting procurement from a fragmented mess into a strategic powerhouse. With a robust baseline in place, you can build strategies, set realistic performance targets, and allocate resources where they’ll have the most impact. In other words, it’s Category Management 101—and it all starts with getting your data in order.

Challenge 2: Digitalizing Consulting Procurement Is Not the End Game

Here’s a hard truth: slapping a shiny digital layer on top of broken processes won’t magically make them better. As a wise man once said (and rightly so): “If you digitalize shitty processes, you’ll just end up with shitty digitalized processes.” The real goal isn’t to go digital—it’s to transform how you utilize, buy, and manage consulting.

This isn’t just about consulting; it’s true for any digital transformation effort. Digital tools are just enablers, not the destination. Without rethinking your processes, priorities, and strategy, all the technology in the world won’t help you deliver real value.

Short-Term Fix: Take a Step Back and Rethink Processes

• Map your current state: Before rushing into digital adoption, assess your existing processes. Identify inefficiencies, redundancies, and areas where value is leaking.
• Challenge assumptions: Ask tough questions—Why do we buy consulting this way? Is this process optimized for outcomes, or are we just sticking to old habits?
• Start small: Pilot improvements in one or two key areas before scaling to the entire organization.

Medium-Term Strategy: Align Digital with Transformation Goals

• Define clear objectives: What are you trying to achieve? Reduced costs? Better utilization of consulting services? Improved ROI? Align your digital tools with these outcomes, not the other way around.
• Integrate best practices: Learn from high-performing organizations and adapt their strategies to your needs. Focus on processes that deliver measurable improvements, like outcome-based pricing or streamlined project scoping.
• Prioritize training and adoption: Transformation requires people to embrace new ways of working. Equip your teams with the skills and mindset to leverage digital tools effectively.

Long-Term Transformation: Build a New Way of Working

• Shift the culture: Foster a mindset that sees consulting as a strategic investment rather than just a cost. Encourage teams to think critically about when and how to engage consultants.
• Leverage digital tools as enablers: Use AI and analytics to optimize consultant selection, scope projects more effectively, and measure outcomes in real time.
• Continuously iterate: Transformation isn’t a one-and-done process. Regularly revisit your strategies, processes, and tools to ensure they’re delivering value and evolving with your needs.

Why It Matters

Digital transformation is a powerful enabler, but it’s not the star of the show. The real magic happens when you redesign your processes to deliver better outcomes, then use digital tools to amplify those improvements. When done right, this approach ensures you’re not just automating inefficiencies but creating a more effective, value-driven way of managing consulting procurement.

By focusing on transformation over technology, you can move beyond “digital for the sake of digital” and start driving real, measurable impact. Remember: digital is the vehicle, not the destination.

Challenge 3: Resistance to Change—The People Problem in Consulting Procurement

When it comes to consulting procurement, the people challenge is in a league of its own. Resistance to change is always a hurdle in digital transformation, but it’s especially pronounced here because consulting is, well, different. It’s intangible, political, and spreads its roots into every corner of the organization. Let’s break it down:

#1. Consulting is intangible: Unlike office supplies or IT hardware, consulting isn’t something you can see, touch, or measure easily. That makes it harder for stakeholders to trust new procurement processes or digital systems.

#2. It’s company-wide: Every department—be it HR, IT, Marketing, or R&D—buys consulting at some point. In large, complex organizations, this creates a web of disconnected decisions and spending patterns.

#3. It’s highly political: Consulting decisions often come straight from the top. Senior leaders—who see themselves as owning this spend—aren’t always eager to let procurement into their space.

#4. Procurement is often sidelined: Unlike other categories, consulting procurement often happens directly between users (internal teams) and consulting firms, bypassing procurement entirely. That means procurement is left trying to clean up the mess, without much control over the process.

These factors combine to make resistance to change in consulting procurement a uniquely tricky challenge.

Short-Term Fix: Build Awareness and Demonstrate Value

• Start with education: Many stakeholders resist change simply because they don’t understand the potential benefits. Host workshops or share success stories about how digital procurement tools have improved outcomes in similar organizations.
• Speak their language: Don’t focus on procurement jargon—frame the benefits of change in terms of what matters to them. For example, show upper management how better procurement can drive business outcomes or align with strategic goals.

Medium-Term Strategy: Establish Relationships and Gain Influence

• Win over senior leadership: Position procurement as a strategic partner, not a meddler. Engage senior leaders in discussions about how digital transformation can enhance decision-making and deliver value beyond cost savings.
• Pilot collaborative projects: Choose a high-visibility consulting engagement and work closely with key stakeholders to demonstrate how procurement’s involvement adds value.
• Create a governance framework: Implement a clear structure for consulting procurement that balances centralized oversight with flexibility for departments. This could include guidelines for engaging consultants and approval processes that involve procurement without being overly restrictive.

Long-Term Transformation: Change the Culture

• Involve procurement early: Work to shift the narrative so procurement isn’t seen as an afterthought. Advocate for procurement’s involvement in the earliest stages of consulting needs assessments.
• Promote transparency: Use digital tools to provide visibility into consulting spend, making it easier to showcase the ROI of better procurement practices.
• Foster champions within departments: Identify and empower stakeholders who believe in the value of digital transformation. They can act as advocates for change within their teams.

Why It Matters

Resistance to change isn’t just a people problem—it’s a strategic roadblock. Without addressing it, even the best digital tools will fall flat. For consulting procurement, overcoming resistance unlocks enormous potential:

• Alignment with strategic goals: By involving procurement, organizations can ensure consulting spend supports their broader objectives.
• Stronger ROI: A more controlled, strategic approach leads to better project outcomes and reduced waste.
• Cultural transformation: Shifting attitudes toward procurement fosters greater collaboration across departments, paving the way for success in other categories too.

At its core, overcoming resistance in consulting procurement isn’t about forcing change—it’s about building trust and proving the value of transformation. Once people see the benefits, the resistance tends to melt away.

Challenge 4: Accounting for the Specificities of Consulting Procurement

Here’s the thing—consulting procurement isn’t like buying office chairs or IT software. It comes with its own quirks, complexities, and workflows that demand tailored solutions, not one-size-fits-all approaches. To truly succeed, organizations need to embrace these specificities and develop processes that work with them, not against them.

Let’s unpack these challenges:

#1. Complex Stakeholder Engagement: Consulting projects often involve a diverse set of stakeholders—executives, business units, procurement teams, and even legal departments—all of whom need to collaborate seamlessly. Getting everyone on the same page can feel like herding cats.

#2. Unique Requirements for Agreements and Intellectual Property: Unlike standard vendor contracts, consulting agreements often include unique terms, like IP ownership, confidentiality clauses, and outcome-based pricing. These need careful attention to detail and often require customization.

#3. Tailored RFP Processes: Consulting procurement demands a tailored approach to sourcing, where a standard RFP process won’t cut it. Scoping the project, evaluating expertise, and aligning objectives requires flexibility and precision.

#4. A Nonlinear Process: Consulting procurement involves a complex, iterative journey—from demand management and make-or-buy decisions to procurement, legal reviews, business-line collaboration, and back to procurement. This cycle needs to be streamlined, not forced into rigid workflows.

Short-Term Fix: Build a Collaborative Framework

• Centralize Communication: Use digital collaboration tools that bring all stakeholders—procurement, legal, business units—onto a single platform. This minimizes miscommunication and ensures alignment at every stage.
• Establish clear roles: Define who does what at each step, from demand management to contract negotiation, so there’s no duplication or dropped responsibilities.

Medium-Term Strategy: Tailor Tools and Processes to Fit Consulting Procurement

• Create flexible RFP templates: Develop templates that allow for customization, ensuring that consulting projects are scoped accurately while maintaining consistency across the organization.
• Integrate legal expertise early: Include legal teams in the initial stages of RFP drafting and supplier negotiations to avoid delays or last-minute changes.
• Streamline workflows: Build workflows that mirror the nonlinear nature of consulting procurement, enabling seamless transitions between demand management, procurement, legal, and business-line approvals.

Long-Term Transformation: Design Systems That Work With Consulting-Specific Needs

• Invest in intelligent platforms: Use AI-driven tools to match consulting needs with the right suppliers, automate parts of the RFP process, and flag potential contract issues before they become bottlenecks.
• Develop a governance model: Create a structured process for managing intellectual property, outcome-based pricing, and other unique aspects of consulting agreements.
• Promote demand management: Work with business lines to implement a make-or-buy framework, ensuring that consulting is only procured when it’s the most strategic option.

Why It Matters

Consulting procurement is too nuanced to succeed with rigid, off-the-shelf approaches. By tailoring solutions to its specific needs, organizations can:

• Foster collaboration: Create processes that engage all stakeholders, driving alignment and reducing friction.
• Improve efficiency: Streamline the back-and-forth between departments, cutting cycle times and reducing frustration.
• Enhance outcomes: Ensure projects are scoped correctly, agreements are airtight, and consultants are matched to needs with precision.

The goal isn’t to simplify consulting procurement into something it’s not—it’s to create processes that respect its complexity while maximizing its strategic potential.

Challenge 5: Technology Integration—Balancing Complexity and Effectiveness in Consulting Procurement

When embarking on digital transformation, one of the biggest hurdles is technology integration. Consulting procurement often requires specialized platforms tailored to its unique needs—a solution we wholeheartedly recommend. However, introducing a dedicated consulting procurement tool can add another layer of complexity to an already intricate ecosystem involving ERP, P2P systems, and analytics tools.

The challenge lies in ensuring these platforms don’t create more problems than they solve. Smooth integration across systems is critical to enable seamless workflows, clean data sharing, and a consistent user experience. While clean data is the ideal outcome, it’s often the trickiest piece of the puzzle to achieve in reality.

Short-Term Fix: Focus on Essential Connections

• Start small: Identify the most critical integrations—such as linking your consulting procurement platform to your ERP or P2P systems—and prioritize those. This prevents overwhelming complexity during the early stages.
• Enable data pipelines: Use APIs or middleware to ensure clean and accurate data flows between systems. This helps avoid duplication, errors, and inefficiencies.
• Address quick wins: Begin by integrating systems that will immediately improve visibility into consulting spend or reduce manual effort in processes like payment reconciliation.

Medium-Term Strategy: Build a Cohesive Ecosystem

• Centralize data management: Invest in a master data management solution to unify data across platforms, ensuring consistency and reducing the risk of conflicting information.
• Adopt modular solutions: Select tools that can integrate easily with existing platforms through standardized APIs, rather than those requiring extensive custom development.
• Implement data validation checks: Use automated validation processes to maintain data quality as it moves between systems. This helps you avoid downstream problems caused by dirty or mismatched data.

Long-Term Transformation: Create an Agile and Scalable Setup

• Design for flexibility: Your consulting procurement needs will evolve over time, so ensure your system architecture allows for future integrations and scalability without a complete overhaul.
• Use AI for integration management: Leverage machine learning to identify inefficiencies in data flow or process bottlenecks, helping refine your system as it grows.
• Develop a digital governance framework: Establish guidelines and roles for how platforms interact, how data is managed, and who oversees system performance. This ensures a consistent approach across all tools.

Why It Matters

Integration challenges aren’t just about making systems talk to each other—they’re about ensuring the entire procurement process works seamlessly. Poor integration leads to data silos, frustrated users, and inefficiencies that undermine the very purpose of digital transformation. By getting integration right, you can:

• Simplify workflows: Enable a smoother, more transparent process from demand management to payment.
• Improve data reliability: Ensure the data shared across systems is accurate, up-to-date, and actionable.
• Enhance decision-making: With systems that communicate effectively, you’ll have better visibility into consulting spend, supplier performance, and ROI.

Ultimately, technology should simplify complexity, not amplify it. With a thoughtful integration strategy, you can ensure that specialized consulting procurement tools don’t just fit into your ecosystem—they enhance it.

Conclusion: Embracing the Transformation of Consulting Procurement

Digital transformation in consulting procurement is more than just a tech upgrade—it’s an opportunity to redefine how organizations engage with consulting as a strategic asset. From cleaning up scattered data to addressing resistance to change, tailoring processes, and integrating specialized tools, the path forward requires thoughtful planning and execution.

But here’s the key takeaway: transformation doesn’t happen overnight, and it doesn’t happen alone. Whether you’re at the start of your journey or looking to refine existing processes, the right insights, tools, and guidance can make all the difference.

What’s Next?

If this article has sparked ideas or questions about your consulting procurement strategy, we’d love to help.

• Agendar with our experts for tailored advice on navigating the challenges of digital transformation.
• Explore our recommended readings and videos to dive deeper into best practices, strategies, and success stories.

Transformation starts with a conversation—let’s start yours today!

References for Further Study

To deepen your understanding of the digital transformation of consulting procurement, the following resources are highly recommended:

Mastering the Digitalisation of Consulting Procurement: The Ultimate Guide

Generative AI in Procurement: A Game-Changer or Just Hype