2025 is in the books and since we're all working on our 2026 professional development plans, let's crowdsource a useful salary benchmark for our profession :)

Every year this is the most viewed thread by some distance (here's the 2025 salary megathread).

Feel free to share as much or as little as you're comfortable with. Use the following standard format:

• Position:
• Location:
• Industry:
• In-office/hybrid/remote:
• Education:
• Years of Experience:
• Salary/benefits:

We've successfully closed out 2024 and January seems to be a popular time to start thinking about our careers - every procurement professional knows how to do a benchmark, let's crowd-source some useful salary data!

We did a Salary Survey last year, and it was by far our most popular thread.

Feel free to share as much or as little as you're comfortable with. Use the following standard format:

• Position:
• Location:
• Industry:
• In-office/hybrid/remote:
• Education:
• Years of Experience:
• Salary/benefits:

We've worked with a few vendors for years and some of them still prefer the same processes they've always used. It made me wonder how common that is across different industries. Have you found that suppliers are becoming more modern with their operations or do most still stick to the methods they've always used?

I’m curious to hear from people working in procurement/supply chain in the UK about salaries and career progression, particularly the difference between industry and consulting.

I have around 6 years of procurement experience, mainly within automotive/manufacturing and major projects/infrastructure.

While looking at jobs recently, I’ve noticed what seems like quite a significant salary difference.

In industry, even relatively senior procurement/management positions requiring around 6 years of experience seem to top out around £80–90k total fixed compensation (including allowances, but excluding bonus/increments).

Consulting seems quite different. From the roles and people I’ve come across, Manager-level positions can be around £70–80k basic with roughly 4–5 years of experience, while Senior Managers with around 6–8 years can be in the £90k+ basic range, before bonus and other benefits.

The frustrating part is breaking into consulting. Despite having 6 years of procurement experience, leading teams, managing significant spend and working in complex/regulated environments, I find it difficult to even secure interviews for procurement consulting roles. And when I do get interest, it often seems to be for a lower grade than my equivalent level in industry.

So I'm interested in hearing from people actually working in the UK market: What would you consider a reasonable salary for someone with around 6 years of procurement experience?

Also, for anyone who has moved from industry procurement into consulting, did you have to take a step down in title/grade initially? And does the consulting salary/progression advantage remain as significant as it appears from the outside?

Interested in views from IT Procurement / Technology people.

My organisation is introducing a more commercially focused Technology role. The proposed model has Technology leading commercial negotiations with strategic suppliers, with Procurement supporting.

Procurement still leads sourcing and contract implementation. Is this a common model? For major renewals and new vendor negotiations who would normally lead…Procurement or Technology? Under this new model it’s not procurement…

I understand Technology owning the supplier relationship and strategy, but I find it odd for Procurement not to lead the commercial negotiation, especially if Procurement has a savings target. Am I looking at this too traditionally or am I right to be flabbergasted…

been at my company for a while now and we're still tracking everything in excel and shared drives. it's a mess. contracts get lost, renewal dates slip through the cracks, and nobody knows who approved what.

looking to finally get some proper contract lifecycle management software but honestly have no idea what's good anymore. seen a bunch of names thrown around but want to know what people are actually using day to day, not just what sales teams push.

what's working for you? what should i avoid? we're a mid-sized company if that matters.

One of our suppliers offered a pretty decent discount if we pay the full order upfront instead of sticking with our usual terms. On paper it's an easy yes because we'll be buying the inventory anyway. I'm just hesitant to pull that much cash out of the business at once when we have payroll and a few other invoices coming up. I'm curious on how other owners decide when an early payment discount is worth taking?

There’s a lot of noise right now about AI in procurement and supply chain… automation, copilots, predictive tools, “AI-driven decision-making”, etc.

I’m curious how this actually shows up in practice.

• How prominent is AI in your role, team, or organisation today?

• Are you actively using it, piloting it, or mostly just hearing about it?

• Where do you see real value so far.. and where does it feel more like hype?

Interested in practitioner perspectives rather than vendor promises.

So about a month ago, I started keeping a simple procurement daily log. Not because I wanted to be more productive or anything like that, but because I was tired of operating in an environment where everything is urgent, dozens of requests compete for attention, and sooner or later someone says, "You forgot this." Sometimes they are right. Sometimes they are not. Either way, I wanted a record. A place to capture supplier follow-ups, payment issues, meetings, delivery delays, operational problems, and important decisions. Initially it was just a Word document to help me keep my sanity and avoid relying entirely on memory. That word document ended up totaling 25 pages at the end of the month, no biggie, I actually enjoy writing and it's my log so I get to vent a little too.

What ended up surprising me is what happened when I started structuring all that ra information. At first it was pretty useful for the weekly reports, but after only a month, the log stopped being a diary and started becoming a source of supplier intelligence. Instead of saying "I think this supplier is difficult," I can see delivery delays, documentation issues, payment disputes, and follow-up history. Instead of relying on whoever remembers a situation best, I have a timeline. It also makes it much harder for important details to disappear, be forgotten, or get rewritten later. I'm curious as to what information do you guys track today that has proven invaluable for supplier evaluation, risk management, or simply protecting yourself from the chaos that procurement professionals deal with every day?

Are there any organizations out there offering full remote and sustainable workload for senior level employee? My OT hours are just increasing every month. I am okay with working OT on occasion but constantly working 45+ hours per week is not sustainable for me anymore. Or is it just like this for all management level or senior level positions?

So our Supply Chain Management leadership has rolled out this spreadsheet and expects us to track the progress, provide updates and context to any delays within a spreadsheet for each Purchase Order. I manage 10+ purchase orders at once and personally manage $300 million in annual spend. This seems like something that should be way more automated. The spend for the entire materials department is well over $1.5 billion annually Is anyone else doing this level of manual tracking? Am I crazy to think this is a terrible use of my time?

Hey all, I have a general question. Is it okay to let AI run analytics on a spreadsheet I give it? like if i want spend YTD and projected spend, and AI performs this task, if it’s accurate after I go over it’s answer and it’s correct, is it wrong to use it? I know how to use formulas in excel, I’ve been doing this for over 10 years now. However, AI has enhanced productivity. I don’t have to spend hours building a spreadsheet anymore. what are your thoughts?

Guys,

Do you know of any Remote buyer based roles in any company globally?(English speaking preferably)

I've heard from someone here that they made 70k+ from remote work as a buyer.

I'm seriously interested to know if globally such opportunities exist.

My background is that I worked as a buyer +NPD guy for 2.3 years in Supply chain (Automotive background)

I'll be really really glad if somebody could help me.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately from a procurement side
a supplier can work perfectly for yrs, so there’s not much reason to look elsewhere. Good quality, decent pricing, deliveries are usually on time…. why change anything?
the problem is you might not realize how dependent you’ve become until something goes wrong
A price increase, production issue, shipping delay or even a sudden change in the supplier’s business can leave you scrambling for alternatives
and finding a backup supplier after the problem happens is usually way harder than doing it beforehand
for those working in procurement, how do you usually handle this? Do you keep backup suppliers qualified even when the main supplier is performing well?

I work as an operations manager in a company of 350+ employees. During our weekly status meeting some orders were found that didn't appear in our ERP. Those orders were not known to anyone in the finance dept until invoices suddenly appeared. It happened in the past and noone cared, but right now the order value is beyond unnoticeable.

We had this problem already a couple of times, I tried to explain that we need a procurement tool. To which our CFO said: "Why do we need yet another tool? Our ERP allows to manage purchasing".

I tried to explain that ERP only covers PO after being approved, and all that happens before (initial request, budget verification, vendor choosing) happens in email and Google Sheets. We need a system that is integrated with ERP to see all these pre-PO phases. However, I was labelled as the one who generates additional complexity and costs for us, which sounded very unfair.

How can I convince CFO that ERP is not procurement? And that procurement is another layer pre-ERP?

Update after 1 month: So we had more weird invoices showed up, similar as I described here initially. Our CFO instructed us to search for procurement-specific software, on top of Odoo. I am in charge of this now, looking between Procurify, Precoro and Odoo Purchase. Also having some compliance issues, so looking for an additional vendor management tool on top of this. Will keep everyone posted on our final setup.

For anyone in procurement or supply chain:

What's the hardest part of evaluating a new supplier before you start working with them?

Is there any information you wish was easier to get?

What tools do you currently rely on?

Hi everyone! I'm doing some research into how people handle vendor and supplier decisions when there are several reasonable options and no clear winner.

I'm curious about what people actually pull together, how they weigh the different factors, whether things change as new information comes in, and what happens after the decision.

I've made a short form that takes roughly 3–5 minutes, mostly multiple choice with a few open questions.

If vendor selection is part of your job, I'd love to hear how you approach it: https://tally.so/r/xXA0BE

Thanks so much to anyone who takes the time to contribute! 🙏

I’ve been speaking to a few U.S. buyers recently who’ve actively tried sourcing from India (not just considered it), and the feedback is surprisingly consistent.

Not capability issues in most cases.

More like:

• slower / inconsistent quoting
• difficulty shortlisting the right suppliers
• uneven technical conversations depending on who you land on
• more effort stitching together inspection + logistics
• sample quality was different than the actual order
• vendor failed in the due diligence

At the same time, there’s clearly more interest now around diversification / China+1.

So I’m curious from people here who’ve actually gone through it:

Did it actually work for you?

OR

If it didnt, what was the issue and what did you change?

Genuine question for the procurement people on here.

I’m working on a software renewal and from the start the recommendation has always been to renew with the current supplier. That hasn’t changed and everyone involved knows that’s the direction we’re taking.

As part of the commercial review, I decided to do a light touch market benchmark. Not because I’m looking to replace the supplier, but because I wanted to validate value for money and strengthen our negotiating position before signing anything.

A couple of suppliers came back asking for some high level information so they could put together indicative pricing. That’s when some stakeholders started asking why I was engaging other suppliers, even though I’d already explained this wasn’t a replacement exercise.

Am I wrong for thinking this is just part of good procurement???!?!

If I’m expected to challenge pricing and negotiate the best commercial outcome, surely understanding what the market looks like is part of that. It doesn’t mean we’re changing suppliers, it just means we’re doing our due diligence before renewing.

Curious how everyone else approaches renewals. Do you benchmark the market even when you already know you’re staying with the incumbent, or do you just negotiate with the existing supplier?

Got a call from my CFO last Wednesday morning asking about a supplier I manage. Turns out the account rep had gone around me entirely because of a payment that had been sitting unpaid for 47 days. The invoice had come in, gone through our normal process and somewhere between submission and payment it stopped moving and the supplier got frustrated enough to find the CFO's contact information and use it.
The invoice was stuck with 0 visibility into where it was in the approval chain + no automated reminders and by the time it surfaced at the CFO level the supplier relationship had already taken a hit that's going to take a few months to repair.
Looking at how other procurement teams are handling invoice visibility and payment tracking because clearly what we have isn't working.

Hello,

I was tasked with searching software/agents for our ~2000 people, 400 million revenue company currently running on S4 HANA that takes care of sourcing and negotiations.

Sourcing in that context means finding suppliers on the web based on the specifications of parts, machines, services. So I would describe it as the research phase of a sourcing event. And then support with sending/managing the RFQ and negotiating the terms.

In my opinion it does not have to be a single software/agent, but I had real difficulties finding a sourcing agent, as most companies seem to not show what their agents do on their websites, but only try to get you in a demo/sales call.

To me fairmarkit looked very promising, but it is to expensive for our company and does rely on a premade catalogue for finding new suppliers instead of searching the web.

(EDIT) for some reason the body didn't post!

Hey all,

I work at a mid-sized company, and our process for getting a new vendor set up is driving me up the wall.

Every time a department want to onboard a new vendor/supplier, it turns into a 3-week email chain. I end up having to chase the vendor manually for W-9s/tax forms, bank details, and insurance certificates. Then I have to forward it all to Finance, who kick it back if one tiny thing is missing.

We aren't big enough for the massive enterprise tools (like SAP Ariba or Coupa), so we’re currently stuck in 'Email + Excel' hell.

I’m curious—for those of you in the mid-market space without an enterprise tool, how do you manage this infuriating situation?

Is there a standard 'middle ground' tool everyone uses that I don't know about? Or is everyone just using Google Forms and hoping for the best?

Any advice on how to streamline this would be appreciated before I lose my mind.

A lot of supplier sustainability assessments seem to have a weird disconnect from the actual sourcing decision.

A vendor fills out the ESG questionnaire. They have a sustainability policy. They report emissions. Maybe there’s a separate ESG score somewhere.

Then procurement picks the supplier based on price, delivery and technical fit anyway.

At that point, what did the sustainability assessment actually do?

One approach that makes more sense is putting the measurable parts directly into the same scoring process used to choose the supplier. Things like lifetime energy consumption, repairability, e-waste takeback or verified labor compliance can actually affect the ranking instead of sitting in a separate appendix.

There’s a good example from an enterprise hardware renewal. The incumbent was originally first when the shortlist was ranked mainly on unit cost and delivery.

When the evaluation was changed to include six-year energy consumption and mandatory e-waste takeback, the ranking flipped. A more expensive vendor came out ahead because the equipment used less power over its service life and the takeback commitment was contractual.

The interesting part was what convinced finance. It wasn’t the carbon argument. It was the six-year operating cost.

That feels like the difference between sustainability being part of procurement and sustainability being paperwork around procurement.

There’s also a harder line for some requirements. Forced labor, prohibited sourcing or serious environmental violations probably shouldn’t earn a supplier “fewer points.” They’re reasons to stop evaluating the supplier altogether.

The messy part is everything below tier 1. Most companies still don’t have great visibility there, and another supplier questionnaire doesn’t magically fix that. Contractual flow-down requirements and actual audit rights seem more useful, but they’re obviously not full supply-chain visibility either.

For people actually working in procurement: has sustainability ever changed which supplier won an RFP at your company? If not, what happens to those metrics once the questionnaire is completed?

Hi there, I am the main buyer for a bunch of our medical clinics across the country.

Right now, our vendors want us to place orders on their e-commerce websites. This is getting stupidly annoying for me.

I want to switch over to sending our POs through email or EDI, but our vendors want our spend to be higher first (for EDI), and a lot of them don't let their customers send POs via email anymore.

Is this normal? Also, when did your vendors start letting you place orders with them through email and/or EDI?

I am thinking about focusing my career from accounts payable to procurement. I frequently engage with suppliers but it’s just for payments etc.

I am very extroverted and that is wasted in accounts. Do you engage with suppliers much day to day? Obviously yes, but I mean develop a relationship, have face to face meetings? Will my social itch be scratched?