Strategic Procurement and Sourcing

Strategic Procurement and Sourcing is a five-day senior procurement course delivered by Mars Training Centre at our international venues — including London, Dubai, Amsterdam, Geneva, and Kuala Lumpur — designed for procurement directors, heads of sourcing, and category leaders responsible for high-value spend.

Procurement has moved a long way from the purchase-order function it once was. Boards now look to procurement to manage tens or hundreds of millions of pounds of spend, secure supply through geopolitical disruption, deliver year-on-year savings without damaging supplier relationships, and embed sustainability and risk management into every category. That requires a strategic operating model, not a transactional one, and it requires senior procurement leaders who can think and act at executive level.

Across five focused days, you will move from a spend-mapping diagnostic into the disciplines that separate strategic procurement from operational buying — category strategy, sourcing strategy selection, total cost of ownership, supplier segmentation, and the build-versus-buy decision. The week is delivered by senior practitioners who have led procurement organisations in industry. You leave with a personal action plan grounded in your own categories and spend profile.

What You Will Learn

By the end of this programme, you will be able to:

• Map your organisation's spend and segment it for strategic treatment.
• Design a category strategy that aligns with corporate objectives.
• Select the right sourcing strategy for each category profile.
• Build a total-cost-of-ownership model that goes beyond unit price.
• Apply supplier segmentation to focus relationship investment.
• Construct a make-versus-buy analysis for a critical category.
• Embed sustainability, risk, and innovation criteria into sourcing decisions.
• Build the business case for a strategic procurement transformation.
• Lead a category review with cross-functional stakeholders.
• Translate procurement results into board-level language.

How You Will Benefit

You will leave with a structured framework for moving your function from operational to strategic, the analytical tools to make category and sourcing decisions defensibly, and a Mars Certificate of Completion.

Your organisation will gain a procurement leader who can articulate strategy at the executive table, deliver category outcomes that go beyond price reduction, and bring discipline to high-value sourcing decisions.

Who This Programme Is For

This programme is designed for senior procurement professionals, including:

• Chief Procurement Officers and Procurement Directors
• Heads of Sourcing and Heads of Category
• Category Managers responsible for high-value spend
• Supply chain directors with procurement accountability
• Senior commercial managers in capital-intensive industries
• Finance directors with procurement oversight
• Senior public-sector procurement leaders
• Procurement transformation programme directors

The seniority floor is senior manager and above.