You never applied to be Head of Procurement. Yet here we are.
The telecoms renewal, the energy contract, the waste tender — they all land on your desk, on top of the day job. Meanwhile, the suppliers on the other side know their margins to the penny. Protect Margin puts specialist buyers on every category, so margin stops leaking and you get back to strategy.
13 questions · 3 minutes · board-ready report · No cost · No obligation · Download the FD's guide
Auditel's 30 years of benchmarking finds organisations routinely overpaying for goods and services — because "within budget" and "value for money" are not the same thing.
Contracts auto-renew unchallenged, supplies drift out of contract onto default rates, and negotiated savings quietly erode as suppliers rebuild their margin.
It isn't just the money. It's the strategic work that never happens while you and your team firefight renewals, billing queries and supplier admin.
The accidental procurement department
No business of 50–500 people can justify employing full-time procurement specialists across 15–20 buying categories. So the categories default to finance — to people with a full-time job already, negotiating against suppliers who do this all day, every day.
- ▸Termination dates and renewal windows slip through the gaps — because nobody had time to challenge them.
- ▸The big categories get attention; stationery, water, couriers, mobiles and merchant cards run on autopilot for years.
- ▸When the board asks "are we getting value for money?", the honest answer is an assurance — not evidence.
- ▸And the nagging feeling remains: I should have this under control, and I don't have the hours to check.
A specialist for every category.
One project director for you.
Protect Margin is delivered in partnership with Auditel. You get a single point of contact who runs the whole programme — and behind them, hand-picked category specialists with lifetimes of supply-side experience, negotiating with your suppliers' own playbook.
"Over the past 10 years, we have been able to focus on growth whilst Auditel has enabled us to achieve significant savings in a broad range of areas, with minimum effort for our team."
Finance Director — Bifold Fluidpower (manufacturing)
"I have not only benefited from cost savings, but also been able to pass all correspondence from our utility companies direct to Auditel for review. This takes away a great deal of pressure from my day to day workings."
Finance Director — Multiflight (aviation, 70 staff)
Three steps to a protected margin
Take the Score
13 questions, 3 minutes. The Margin Protection Score benchmarks your coverage, contracts, time and board-readiness — and shows you where margin is most likely leaking.
Get your board-ready report
A category-by-category RAG breakdown, formatted to drop straight into a board pack — evidence, not assurance, for the "value for money" question.
Book a 20-minute Margin Review
Walk your results through with a specialist against live market data. If we don't believe there's meaningful margin to recover, we'll tell you.
The categories nobody has time for
Every line below has produced real savings for Auditel clients — most of them in businesses exactly your size, in categories that had run unchallenged for years.
Ranges drawn from published Auditel client case studies including Bifold, Lindab, Helping Hands, Multiflight, YMCA, The Wallich and Tout's Budgens. Individual results depend on current contracts and market conditions.
Walk into the board meeting with answers
Success isn't just recovered margin. It's you, tabling a one-page procurement strategy — every category owned, benchmarked and market-tested — and fielding the "are we getting value for money?" question with evidence instead of assurances. Categories professionally managed with minimal input from your team. You, back on the strategic work you're actually there to do.
The FD's Board-Ready Procurement Strategy
What good looks like in every indirect category — and a one-page strategy template you can table at your next board meeting. Written for Finance Directors of 50–500 person businesses who don't have a procurement function, and shouldn't need one.
What good looks like
- Category-by-category best practice: energy, telecoms, waste, water, print, supplies, fleet and more
- The five contract clauses that quietly cost you money
- How to build a contract register in an afternoon
- The Procurement Strategy on a Page — board-ready template
- A self-audit checklist mirroring the Margin Protection Score