Procurement in the 100-Day Plan: A Checklist for Operating Partners
The first 100 days are the cheapest window you will ever have to put procurement EBITDA into the deal model. Here is the five-step track the best operating partners run.
Most 100-day plans I see cover finance controls, leadership, reporting cadence, maybe pricing. Procurement gets a line that says “review supplier costs, Q3.” Q3 becomes Q4. Q4 becomes never. Understandably: the first 100 days are crowded, and procurement has rarely had a senior champion at this size. Which is exactly why the operating partners who give it one capture EBITDA the rest of the market leaves unworked.
Here is what a serious procurement track looks like inside a 100-day plan, for a mid-sized portco where the lever has not yet been worked. Five steps.
Days 1–14: Get the baseline.
Pull 12–24 months of AP data. You need three answers: total addressable spend, category breakdown, supplier concentration. The data will be messy. That is fine; modern AI-driven analysis handles messy. If the company cannot produce the data at all, you have just learned something important about its controls.
Days 15–30: Size the prize.
Rank categories by opportunity: spend size, time since last competition, supplier concentration, market conditions. In my experience the addressable gap typically runs at 15–25% of addressable spend. Even the conservative end, applied to your spend base, usually justifies the next step several times over.
Days 30–45: Assign an owner.
This is where most plans die. Savings need a single accountable owner with senior weight. A permanent CPO search takes about six months. That is most of your first year gone. An interim or fractional CPO starts in days and can run the first waves while you decide whether the company needs a permanent hire at all.
Days 45–90: Run the first wave.
Two or three categories. Pick at least one quick win: unglamorous, low stakeholder resistance, fast cycle. The point of wave one is proof and momentum, not perfection.
Days 90–100: Lock the operating rhythm.
Savings tracked in the monthly pack, same as revenue. A 12-month sourcing calendar. Contract renewal alerts so nothing auto-renews unchallenged again.
None of this is exotic. It is the same discipline you already apply to the finance function, applied to the buy side. The portcos that do it convert procurement from an afterthought into one of the cleanest EBITDA bridges in the deal model.