Procright - How to Build a Strategic Procurement Function

For many organizations, procurement still gets treated as a back-office necessity: issue a purchase order, negotiate a price, move the paperwork, and keep operations running. That model may work in stable environments with limited complexity. It breaks down quickly when a company is expanding, buying globally, managing asset-intensive operations, or facing volatile input costs.

That is the core lesson from a recent discussion with procurement leader Paul Mariselling, whose career has centered on building procurement capabilities inside organizations that did not yet have mature functions in place. His perspective is especially relevant for companies in construction, telecom, industrial operations, and other sectors where procurement mistakes are expensive, timelines are unforgiving, and supplier decisions have long-term operational consequences.

The most valuable idea in the conversation is simple: strategic procurement is not just about buying better. It is about helping the business make better decisions earlier, with more structure, less fragmentation, and clearer long-term value.

Key Takeaways

Start with operating model, not just sourcing events. A strategic procurement function needs governance, process, data, and role clarity.
Centralization creates visibility. If business units use the same suppliers independently, consolidation opportunities are being lost.
Think beyond the initial purchase. For capital assets, include utilization, lifecycle cost, and exit strategy in procurement planning.
Supplier relationships are strategic assets. Strong vendor engagement can improve innovation, alignment, and long-term commercial outcomes.
Soft skills matter as much as hard skills. Internal influence, education, and change management are essential in greenfield environments.
Procurement maturity varies by region and company. Don’t assume market sophistication equals organizational readiness.
Operational buy-in is often the bottleneck. The challenge is rarely just process design; it is getting stakeholders to think beyond immediate execution.
Volatility changes the function’s mandate. Tariffs, fuel prices, and global sourcing complexity require procurement to become more predictive and strategic.
Talent selection is pivotal. A growing procurement team needs people who can translate business needs into commercial structure, not just process transactions.
Treat procurement as a business enabler. The most effective teams shape strategy, rather than reacting to requests after decisions are already made.

Procurement’s Real Maturity Test: Can It Shape Business Direction?

Mariselling’s career path spans domestic manufacturing, telecom, aviation, consulting, construction, and marine operations. Across those industries, one pattern stands out: the most meaningful procurement work often happens where the function is underdeveloped.

He repeatedly emphasized a preference for "greenfield" environments, meaning organizations where procurement is being built or fundamentally reshaped rather than merely maintained. That preference reveals an important truth about procurement maturity.

A procurement team is not strategic because it has a sourcing policy or a spend dashboard. It becomes strategic when it can answer questions such as:

Where is the business trying to go over the next two to five years?
What supplier and asset decisions need to be made now to support that path?
Which contracts should include lifecycle, disposal, or resale provisions?
Where are separate teams buying the same thing without coordination?
Which external cost drivers could undermine the business model?

These are business questions first and procurement questions second. That distinction matters. Companies often try to "modernize procurement" by adding tools before resolving ownership, accountability, and stakeholder alignment. Mariselling’s view points in the opposite direction: build the function around outcomes, then support it with process and technology.

Why Greenfield Procurement Is Harder Than It Looks

Building a procurement function from scratch sounds appealing. There is no entrenched system to unwind, no legacy technology stack to defend, and no inherited category structure to fix. But greenfield environments create a different challenge: you are not just designing procurement; you are selling the organization on why procurement should exist in a different form at all.

That means the role is part architect, part operator, and part internal diplomat.

In practical terms, greenfield procurement leaders usually face three immediate realities:

1. Procurement is already happening, just not strategically

Even without a central function, business units are still buying. Operations managers, project leaders, and department heads often have their own supplier relationships, habits, and informal workarounds.

The problem is not absence of purchasing activity. The problem is fragmentation:

multiple teams use the same vendors without shared leverage
spend data is scattered
contract terms vary unnecessarily
risk controls are inconsistent
no one has a full picture of supplier dependency

Strategic procurement begins by making this hidden structure visible.

2. Stakeholders measure speed before they measure value

In underdeveloped procurement environments, operational teams often see procurement as a potential delay. If their current method gets material onsite quickly, they may not initially care whether pricing is optimized, terms are standardized, or demand is aggregated.

That creates a familiar tension: procurement sees long-term gains; the business sees immediate delivery pressure.

The solution is not to impose process for its own sake. It is to prove that better procurement can support execution while reducing rework, leakage, and future cost escalation.

3. Internal education becomes part of the job description

Mariselling highlighted the need to help stakeholders understand "what we do, how we do it, [and] why we’re doing it." That is not optional in a strategic buildout. It is foundational.

A procurement function that cannot explain its value in business language will be pushed back into a transactional corner.

The Shift From Transactional Buying to Strategic Asset Management

One of the strongest parts of the discussion came when Mariselling described sourcing for marine construction equipment such as cranes, barges, and scows. These are not routine supplies. They are large capital purchases with meaningful operational and financial consequences.

That context clarifies what strategic procurement actually looks like in practice.

When sourcing expensive operational assets, a narrow "best price" lens is inadequate. Procurement has to evaluate:

total cost of ownership
sourcing geography
fuel and logistics implications
tariff exposure
utilization assumptions
maintenance and support
end-of-life disposal or resale options
contract flexibility over multiple years

This is where procurement stops being a purchasing control point and becomes a planning discipline.

Mariselling described agreements that include exit strategies for assets once they reach end-of-life. That is a strong example of mature thinking. Too many organizations optimize acquisition but neglect disposition. As a result, they carry obsolete assets too long, absorb avoidable disposal costs, or miss residual value opportunities.

For procurement leaders, the lesson is clear: if you are buying assets that shape operations, procurement must own more than the purchase event. It must influence the full commercial lifecycle.

Global Sourcing Makes Procurement More Strategic, Not Less

Another major theme in the conversation was global sourcing expansion. As the organization grew, sourcing moved beyond North America, including purchases from Europe and Asia.

This creates opportunity, but also exposes procurement to a wider set of uncertainties:

tariffs
currency fluctuations
transportation costs
fuel volatility
geopolitical risk
supplier lead-time variability

In such an environment, procurement cannot simply compare supplier quotes and award business. It needs to interpret external market conditions and translate them into sourcing strategy.

This is especially important for technical decision-makers and procurement leaders in asset-heavy sectors. A supplier that appears cheapest at award may become far more expensive once transportation, tariff changes, installation constraints, or lifecycle support are factored in.

Strategic procurement therefore requires a broader cost lens:

commercial cost: quoted price, rebates, payment terms
operational cost: downtime risk, deployment delays, support capability
market cost: commodity swings, fuel exposure, import conditions
strategic cost: lock-in, weak exit options, inflexible contract structures

The video did not provide a formal methodology for calculating these dimensions, but the examples make the principle unmistakable: global sourcing demands better procurement intelligence, not just broader supplier access.

Centralization Is Less About Control Than About Coordination

Centralized procurement can be misunderstood as bureaucracy. In reality, the best reason to centralize is not control for its own sake. It is coordination.

Mariselling described a situation where multiple business units were already engaging in procurement activities, but without any "meeting of the minds." That phrase captures a common enterprise problem: teams operate independently because they are focused on delivery, yet that local efficiency creates enterprise inefficiency.

A centralized procurement function can add value by:

identifying overlapping suppliers across business units
consolidating spend where it makes sense
creating consistent commercial terms
improving data visibility
reducing duplicate work
standardizing risk and compliance controls
capturing learning from one team and applying it elsewhere

This does not require total centralization in every decision. In many technical or operational settings, the right model is centralized strategy with decentralized technical input. Procurement provides structure, commercial expertise, and supplier governance, while operations defines performance needs and implementation realities.

That balance is often where strategic procurement succeeds.

Soft Skills Are Not Secondary. They Are Core Infrastructure.

One of the most useful insights in the conversation is that procurement capability is not just about category expertise, sourcing rigor, or contract skills. In immature environments, those are necessary but insufficient.

The harder work is often interpersonal:

building credibility
translating procurement into operational language
navigating skepticism
facilitating cross-functional alignment
showing teams how enterprise decisions affect local outcomes

Mariselling framed this as "upselling" what procurement can do. In corporate language, that may sound uncomfortable, but it is accurate. Procurement leaders frequently have to create demand for strategic involvement before the organization naturally asks for it.

This is especially true in functions like operations, marketing, and IT, where stakeholders may believe procurement lacks category-specific understanding. There is some truth in that concern. Procurement professionals do not always bring deep domain expertise in every spend area.

But the strategic value of procurement is not that it replaces subject matter experts. It is that it combines stakeholder expertise with commercial structure, supplier market insight, and disciplined decision-making.

That is why soft skills matter so much. Procurement must be able to say, in effect:
You understand the requirement. We can help ensure the business gets the best overall outcome from that requirement.

Supplier Relationships Still Matter in a Digital Procurement World

The discussion also touched on a topic that remains underappreciated in highly process-driven organizations: supplier relationship management.

Mariselling contrasted more mature supplier engagement practices with environments where companies still hesitate to invest in vendor days, supplier alignment sessions, or structured relationship development. That hesitation is understandable in organizations focused on short-term execution. Relationship programs can look nonessential when compared with immediate sourcing tasks.

But that view misses the strategic upside.

Well-managed supplier relationships can improve:

visibility into supplier roadmaps
alignment on future demand
responsiveness during disruptions
access to innovation
contract flexibility
issue escalation pathways
total commercial performance over time

In other words, relationship management is not a "nice to have." It is part of procurement risk management and value creation.

That does not mean every supplier deserves white-glove treatment. It means procurement should segment the supply base and invest relationship energy where operational impact and strategic importance justify it.

A Practical Blueprint for Building a Strategic Procurement Function

Based on the themes in the conversation, a practical approach to building strategic procurement would look like this:

1. Diagnose how buying currently happens

Map who buys what, from whom, under what terms, and with what approval structure. The goal is to understand the real operating environment, not the org chart.

2. Identify fragmentation and hidden overlap

Look for duplicate suppliers, inconsistent terms, unmanaged categories, and missed aggregation opportunities.

3. Define the procurement mandate clearly

Clarify whether procurement is expected to reduce cost, manage risk, support growth, standardize process, improve supplier performance, or all of the above. Ambiguity weakens adoption.

4. Build governance before scaling complexity

Start with intake, approvals, role ownership, basic policy, and contract visibility. Sophisticated sourcing tools are less useful if foundational controls are weak.

5. Prioritize categories tied to business strategy

Focus first on spend areas with high value, high risk, or strong growth implications. In the video, strategic assets were an obvious starting point because of their cost and operational importance.

6. Incorporate lifecycle thinking

For major assets and long-term supplier agreements, include maintenance, utilization assumptions, support models, and end-of-life planning.

7. Engage stakeholders early

Don’t wait until a sourcing event begins. Build procurement into planning cycles, capital discussions, and growth decisions.

8. Develop supplier relationship discipline

Segment the supplier base and create structured engagement for critical vendors.

9. Hire for influence as well as expertise

In a growing function, the best procurement professionals are often those who can combine commercial judgment with credibility and communication skill.

10. Use data to reinforce - not replace - judgment

Technology, spend visibility, and analytics are important, but they work best when paired with strong process and stakeholder trust.

Regional Maturity Matters, but Organizational Maturity Matters More

A notable part of the discussion was Mariselling’s comparison between Europe and Canada. He argued that Canada, in his experience, has often lagged behind more mature procurement models seen in Europe, particularly in process and strategic adoption.

Whether or not that generalization applies universally, it highlights a useful point for leaders: procurement maturity is uneven. It varies not only by region, but by sector, ownership structure, leadership philosophy, and growth stage.

For executives and procurement professionals, the implication is this: avoid benchmarking solely by geography or industry reputation. Two companies in the same market can be a decade apart in procurement discipline.

The more useful question is: How does this organization currently view procurement - transaction processor, policy enforcer, or strategic business partner?

That perception will shape everything from hiring to stakeholder engagement to systems investment.

What This Means for Procurement Leaders Today

The procurement leaders who create the most value today are not just excellent negotiators or sourcing specialists. They are builders. They create structure where there is fragmentation, discipline where there is urgency, and long-term thinking where the business is tempted to focus only on the immediate purchase.

That is particularly important in environments with:

rapid growth
capital-intensive operations
global sourcing exposure
volatile input markets
low process maturity
decentralized buying behavior

In those settings, procurement’s role expands beyond savings. It becomes a function that helps the business scale without losing control.

Conclusion

Building a strategic procurement function is not mainly a technology project or a policy exercise. It is an organizational transformation effort.

The conversation with Paul Mariselling shows that the real work lies in combining several disciplines at once: commercial rigor, stakeholder education, supplier alignment, lifecycle thinking, and operating model design. Strategic procurement emerges when those pieces come together around business objectives.

For organizations that still treat procurement as a transactional service, the message is straightforward: the cost of that mindset rises as complexity rises. Once purchases involve global suppliers, critical assets, volatile fuel costs, and multiple business units working independently, informal buying habits become expensive.

The strategic procurement function is the mechanism that turns scattered purchasing activity into coordinated business value. And in growth environments, that shift is no longer optional. It is operationally necessary.

Source: "S01 E12 Why Procurement is Becoming a Strategic Business Function | Paul Maras Hilling" - The CPO Perspective Podcast by BeaumontProcurement, YouTube, Jul 1, 2026 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2EONEewwbw

How to Build a Strategic Procurement Function