Upfront: Outsourcing Procurement Heats Up

U.S. businesses are on course to more than double procurement outsourcing over the next three years, according to an Accenture survey. Nonstrategic processes such as application hosting, the requisition-to-pay process and indirect spending are currently the areas most often outsourced. Almost a quarter of respondents said they would consider outsourcing the procurement of some of their direct materials by 2006, but only 9 percent do so today.