No Procurement Team, No Problem: 4 Steps to Save on Software and Build a Process

Let's be honest: procurement wasn't what you signed up for. 

But you recognize that allocating your resources strategically pays dividends and undisciplined spending, auto-renewals, and underutilized tools directly punish your bottom line.

I’ve worked with a handful of CFOs and seen this unexpected responsibility become a powerful lever for immediate financial impact. Where many companies are fighting for 2% improvements elsewhere, procurement consistently delivers 15-30% savings returns as well as hours back of time down the line.

The good news? You can gain immediate savings and build a scalable purchasing process in just 100 days, without a dedicated procurement team.

Here's a simplified, four step plan I walk finance leaders through when they’re wearing the procurement hat solo.

1. Get Visibility

In order to protect cash and mitigate risk, establishing visibility into your spend should be your first priority. You need to be able to confidently answer:

• Who am I paying?
• How much am I spending?
• When are key contracts/renewals coming up?

These questions will help you create an appropriate level of financial clarity across your vendor ecosystem. It doesn’t need to be comprehensive or perfect right now, and you can do this without adding operational bloat.

Here’s a simplified way to improve contract oversight:

1. Create a centralized source of truth (Excel or Google Sheets works) that tracks supplier names, spend amounts, renewal dates, and points of contact.
2. Pull critical contract metadata like end dates, auto-renewal clauses, spend thresholds, and cancellation windows (you do not need full contract audits here, just the basics).
3. Map upcoming budgeted spend to get ahead of renewals.
4. Flag anything renewing in the next 120 days that could affect cash flow or give you large savings opportunities.

Now you have your working pipeline of projects to tackle.

2. Challenge Legacy Spend

Once you’ve created financial clarity and gained a sense of urgent projects, take a zero-based budgeting approach to your incumbent vendors (i.e. the ones you’re already paying for) to find even more saving opportunities.

Why? Inertia often drives renewals, leaving tens of thousands–if not hundreds of thousands–in savings on the table. Challenge your commitments here without disrupting the business. 

To start, I recommend this three-question framework (1-5 scale) to ask stakeholders in your organization:

1. How critical is this tool to achieving your department goals?
2. What specific business outcomes does it drive?
3. Would you consider alternatives if they delivered equal or better value?

Run this exercise with your top 10–20 vendors by spend. I guarantee that consistently uncover:

• Redundant tools across departments
• Services that no longer align with your strategic priorities
• Opportunities to consolidate licenses based on actual usage data

This approach gives you both savings opportunities and the stakeholder buy-in to act on them—a win-win for you.

If you want to dig into your tech stack even deeper, check out how I'd run through a tech stack analysis.

3. Use Pricing Data

To help yourself tackle upcoming contracts in your pipeline and challenge legacy spend, apply data-driven rigor to procurement decisions with this three-part framework:

• Price benchmarking: What do companies your size typically pay?
• Strategic alignment: How does this vendor support our business priorities?
• ROI assessment: What measurable outcomes justify this expense?

Your priority here is to justify and support every spend decision with reliable benchmark data, negotiation insights, and/or outsourced expertise. 

This is what creates leverage. And when you start renewals 90–180 days in advance, you gain negotiating power and avoid last-minute pressure tactics.

Numbers don’t lie: Early engagement dramatically changes outcomes. Our data shows finance leaders who start renewal conversations 90+ days out achieve 22-39% more savings than those who begin within 30 days of renewal. For enterprise contracts, that timing difference alone can be worth six figures.

4. Build a Simple Policy

At this point, it’s time to roll out (or improve upon) a simple purchasing policy that protects the business without slowing it down too. 

The goal isn't to create barriers—it's to build initial guardrails (that you can scale later) that help the business make smarter spending decisions before commitments are made.

If you make this too complicated for employees, they’ll never follow it no matter how hard you enforce it.

Here's the balanced approach I recommend:

• Create a one-page, simple spend policy that outlines:
  
  • What information is required to kick off a new purchase request
  • Approval thresholds and timelines
  • What stakeholders can expect throughout the process
• Have a simple intake process that contains:
  
  • One single link or portal for all stakeholders to use
  • Short list of multiple choice or checkbox questions

The Bottom Line: 100 Days to See Financial Impact Fast 

By following these steps, you’ll allocate your resources more strategically and even gain immediate savings in 100 days or less.

• Improve cash flow by eliminating unnecessary expenses
• Reduce financial risk by avoiding surprise renewals
• Create spending discipline that scales with your business
• Support strategic priorities with intentional vendor relationships

And when you're ready to take it further—whether that's comprehensive vendor rationalization, data-driven negotiations, or automated procurement workflows—more sophisticated services and tools like Tropic exist.

But you don't need to wait for more headcount to start seeing financial impact with procurement.

Want a downloadable checklist of this procurement plan? Grab it for free here.