Executives are feeling the pain. In a recent Bain & Company executive survey, more than half of the respondents told us that cost pressures constrain their ability to make strategic investments (see Figure 1). That is a big issue for nearly all companies, given that procured costs represent between 25 percent and 60 percent of a company’s total costs, depending on the industry. We frequently find that procurement does not get a commensurate level of organizational investment.
