For investors and PE-backed management teams, indirect spend is one of the fastest levers you can pull to improve EBITDA and cash generation, but it is rarely anyone’s day job. The Procurement Group helps investors and their portfolio companies turn overhead and indirect spend into a disciplined, data-driven cost base that supports the investment thesis rather than undermining it. We can work pre-deal to identify potential value enhancements as part of due diligence and investment pack preparation, and post-deal to deliver those improvements within 100-day plans and value-creation roadmaps. Our focus is on the “hard” operational overheads – energy, telecoms, waste, office and facilities costs – rather than people or property, so that the day-to-day infrastructure of the business is being bought well and managed tightly, without adding headcount.

Typical problems we fix

● Indirect spend that has grown organically over years, often through acquisitions, with different suppliers, terms and prices across sites and legacy entities.
● Contracts inherited from previous owners that have never been benchmarked against what a business of today’s scale and profile should be paying.
● Overlaps and gaps in supplier coverage, leading to duplicated costs in some areas and unmanaged risk in others.
● Back‑billing, automatic renewals and unchallenged price increases that quietly erode margin.
● Contracts that are the wrong size for the post‑deal business – too much capacity in some categories, too little resilience or flexibility in others.
● Management teams who know there is value in the overhead base but do not have the time or internal bandwidth to drive a structured review while delivering on the growth plan.

How our process works

1. Pre‑deal: identify the opportunity
Where we are involved pre‑deal, we review available information on indirect spend – contracts, invoices, management accounts and site data – to quantify realistic cost‑reduction and control opportunities. This feeds directly into due diligence, the investment pack and the value‑creation plan, giving both the deal team and the investment committee a clearer view of upside and risk.
2. Post‑deal: align with the investment thesis
Once a deal has completed, we refine the plan with management, aligning our priorities with the investment thesis, 100‑day actions and any integration or carve‑out requirements. That ensures our work supports the plan rather than creating noise or distraction.
3. Map the indirect spend landscape
We pull together contracts, invoices and site data to build a clear picture of indirect spend by category, supplier and entity. This often includes normalising data across acquired businesses so that you can see where the real opportunities and risks lie.
4. Benchmark and design the target state
We benchmark the current position against what a fair price and structure looks like for a business of this size and profile, and identify quick wins alongside more structural changes. We then bring back clear, quantified options that show the impact on run‑rate EBITDA and cash.
5. Implement and support ongoing discipline
Once decisions are made, we execute: negotiating improved terms, consolidating suppliers where appropriate, aligning contract dates with 100‑day and three‑year plans, and making sure new arrangements are set up correctly. We then support ongoing monitoring – checking invoices, managing meter reads where relevant,
and providing clear reporting so that disciplines stick beyond the first year.

Why investors use The Procurement Group

Investors work with us because they want a specialist, repeatable approach to indirect spend that does not require building an internal procurement function at each portfolio company. We understand the pressures of 100‑day plans, debt covenants and exit timelines, and we translate a complex cost base into simple, actionable steps that move EBITDA in the right direction without disrupting customers or staff.