Maverick Spending is Your Friend: Don’t Chase It, Ride It

I have always considered myself a bit of a maverick (even though the term was sullied by Sarah Palin). I mean, the main character in “Top Gun” was Lt. Pete Mitchell, and as such, friends and colleagues at some of my previous employers have given me this nickname. I don’t mind. I think we need mavericks. Mavericks are good. Mavericks shake up the system, and they point out where the system needs change and improvement. This could not be more apt than in procurement.

The conventional procurement wisdom is that maverick spending is bad and that we need to shut down the mavericks. I don't buy it. I actually think that maverick spending is good. What?! Yes: it’s good. Why, you ask?

特立独行的支出是一个金矿,理解failures in the procurement system (with a big “S”). It’s absolutely a critical KPI: in order to reduce it, you have to not only define it (which can be more complicated than you think), but also identify all of the root causes that impact it. Those causes cannot be just ascribed to malfeasance and renegade requisitioners. Rather, they can lead to a better understanding of procurement processes that have failed in terms of stakeholder management, sourcing, P2P, etc. These root causes arekaizens,and wonderful opportunities to pursue. But let’s talk about the definition of maverick spending before we get into the root causes.

Maverick spending is usually defined as off-contract spending. Some firms define it in a similar vein as spending with non-preferred suppliers. But the devil is in the details. Here are a few questions to ask:

• Is using any preferred supplier OK, or must the right supplier for the right spend category be used? If so, at what level on a multi-level category tree should this be established?
• 当一个类别在分类法上没有整齐地归入一个节点时会发生什么？对于IT外包，是IT，还是IT外包？如果两者都有（或两者都有），我该如何建模？
• Is maverick spending binary? If I have a few preferred suppliers in a spend category, or even multiple contracts from one supplier, and the requisitioner is using a less favorable contract, is it maverick? How about if the preferred vendor doesn’t meet the needs of the requisitioner, but an approved supplier is available? Is it completely maverick? Not maverick? Somewhat maverick? How about if there’s a formal approval workflow (e.g., non-preferred travel partners)? Is the approved non-preferred selection maverick?
• 是否应在项目级别确定合规性？如果我决定，我是否应该使用Grainger作为护目镜，并协商了20%的标准折扣，如果预算所有者不介意（例如，作为员工福利），我是否会允许某人以同样的折扣购买NASCAR品牌的护目镜？这是一个哲学问题，会因公司而异。那么，只有一种“正确”的方法吗？
• 我应该在报告中包含事务合规性吗？如果使用p-card从同一供应商处购买同一商品，但该商品在本应通过ACH结算的目录上，这是否属于maverick支出计算的一部分？
• If I have multiple contracts because I split sourced the market basket wisely to optimize the spend, do I now have to define the compliance rules based on geography, business unit, role, user, dollar amount, custom category attributes, etc.? If so, my contract compliance reporting has suddenly become very complex.

仅仅是合同合规性的定义就迫使人们讨论用户选择/满意度、效率（包括监控/跟踪）、控制、节约捕获等方面的权衡。

It also highlights the detail of data you’ll need to capture if you are going to do maverick spending reporting and realized savings reporting. Plus it’ll force the issue of how well contracts are modeling these compliance requirements and also how you are tracking costs (cost models, cost drivers, cost pools, etc.) and their impacts on budgets. Contracts are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and contract compliance reporting and realized savings reporting is just not keeping pace.

我还没有找到一家公司能够在细节层面上进行特立独行的支出，明确处理我刚才列出的所有复杂问题。这样的报告不是简单的OLAP，而是简单的支出数据集。处理所有规则都有一个程序方面。此外，我甚至没有包括更广泛的支出合规性，包括监管合规性、交易合规性、供应商合规性、内部SLA合规性等方面的因素，也没有包括合同合规绩效与其他指标的关系，如利益相关者满意度、流程效率、，我们将在本系列的第二部分讨论这些问题花钱很重要赞成的意见.

如果你是一名从业者，或者是一名与支持这种复杂程度的从业者一起工作的提供者，请私下与我联系，向我展示你所做的工作。我将为任何能够处理这些细微差别的人提供为期一个月的免费支出事务专业访问，希望在特立独行的支出真正发生之前完成。

In the next edition of this series, we will dive into all of the root causes that affect maverick spending that themselves are not compliance issues but, rather, broader procurement and spend management issues that should be addressed (i.e., did we properly engage stakeholders on requirements, did we apply collaborative sourcing techniques? Did we design an effective P2P process? Did we make it easy to do the right thing?). We’ll find that the so-called mavericks are in fact prospectors that will lead us to gold.