“Change is about first having an awareness. Once you have that awareness, then that other party that you're trying to drive that awareness has an understanding. And when that understanding is there, then they're motivated to take action.” - Pratik Patel, Director - Category Management - Labor/North America Technology Spend, Mastercard
Services procurement is inherently complex. If you’ve ever managed this spend, you know it’s a different beast from product-based categories that usually come with clear specifications and tangible measurements.
Services procurement lives in a world of nuance - a world all its own.
Job descriptions can vary wildly, outputs can be subjective, and measuring value often feels like you’re trying to bottle air.
In a recent episode of the Art of Procurement podcast, I spoke with Pratik Patel, Director of Category Management - Labor/North America Technology Spend at Mastercard, about his journey transforming technology services procurement from a decentralized, inefficient process to a streamlined, data-driven program that delivers measurable business value.
Pratik explains how procurement leaders can bring more order and strategic planning to services procurement, which usually requires a blend of process improvement, stakeholder management, and the right technology to tie it all together.
Here, in Pratik's own words, are some insightful moments from our conversation:`
Start with Pain Points
“We need to understand where the waste is. And in understanding the waste, we'll understand the pain points that we have. And once we know where the pain points are, now we can really focus on how we eliminate the pain points.”
Prioritize Supplier Relationships
“I have very close relationships with our suppliers, and honestly, I create an environment so they can absolutely speak their mind because we want to hear any concerns, feedback, frustrations that they may have.”
Learning from Failed Approaches
“I did the old school things that everybody in procurement probably has done in the past where it didn't work in the first year. The lesson was control and dependency. Those are two elements that lend themselves to change requests, and that's waste.”
Identifying Waste
“We had over 750 job roles, job level combinations for thousands of resources. That was eye-opening for me in terms of just understanding the level of waste that existed and how we were defining job role, job level.”
Building in Flexibility
“You cannot be naive and think you have a fixed rate card and everything's going to fit in that fixed rate card because supply and demand changes. You have to be flexible because you might have to increase your rates.”
Accounting for Variability
“One of the metrics that we look at in our reporting is not only the rate of the resource, but also the average rate with that supplier for that same job role, job level in that location. So we can see where that variability is.”
What’s Ahead for Mastercard
“I'm always a person of threes. Number one is data and being able to leverage the predictability that we have. Number two is ‘rinse and repeat’ across the world. And then number three is outcome deliverable based.”
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