Business Alignment in the Procurement Domain

Procurement is increasingly important for organizations acting in dynamic and competitive markets. In practice however, companies struggle with adopting and implementing improvements in the procurement domain. Complexity hampers the achievement of a solid procurement approach that truly integrates all organizational aspects and levels. The central aim of this working paper is to develop a framework that supports an integrative procurement approach. The framework builds upon insights from business-alignment and capability maturity. Moreover, it facilitates a procurement deployment approach dependent on benchmark data and values of company attributes. The framework is to be validated; it is anticipated to be suitable for assessing organizations that are in different stages of adopting, implementing or evaluating procurement improvements. Keywords, procurement maturity, procurement alignment, strategic alignment, capability maturity, benchmarking, competitive advantage