Template: Category Strategy

Use this template to define a clear, action-based category strategy that's rooted in your organization.
Template - Category strategy

Who'll benefit from this template?

If you're a procurement professional, especially a category manager who wants to fit your category strategy to the broader organizational goals when pitching it to the decision-makers, this template is for you.

A Powerful Category Strategy Template for Procurement Professionals

Categorization is a crucial part of any procurement strategy. In the road to position category strategy for success, procurement professionals often face challenges like paralyzing information overload and not knowing where to start.

How can an action-based template help you overcome these challenges?

Information overload is damaging. Lots of details can sometimes cause analysis paralysis and impact your ability to make accurate decisions.

Too much information + lack of insights = no strategy

When lack of strategy meets ever-soaring demands, it becomes difficult for procurement teams to stay laser-focused and document a category strategy with clear and specific goals.

Here, our category strategy template comes to rescue and helps you set out a detailed plan to:

  • Evaluate the current state of your various categories.
  • List the most critical risks that you and your team identify in the categories.
  • Get up to speed on the current market situation by identifying alternative suppliers, their locations, and product/service offerings.
  • Select applicable commercial and/or process levers for the category and specify the feasible alternatives.
  • Decide on and create the appropriate action plan for you and your team.
  • Document the strategy on a "one-pager" where specific goals are detailed, e.g., savings target, number of suppliers, contract lengths, and market complexity.

Using this template, you can follow a matrix-based approach to develop repeatable and sustainable strategies to deliver bottom-line results.

Once you have a well-defined and documented category strategy in place, you can facilitate your team to develop and/or refine potential market approaches and scale benefits.

We have experienced great success by using this template for numerous businesses.