Aligning the procurement strategy with the company strategy

In seafood supply chains, procurement carries a decisive share of the cost of goods sold and of the product promise — both the cost of the raw material itself and every indirect costs it entails. Yet the procurement function is still too often called in at the very end of the process : the product range has been settled, the specifications and technical data sheets are frozen and rarely challenged. All that remains is haggling at the margin when the order is placed — the first and lowest level of negotiation. Economically, this yields little. It should nonetheless be done, systematically.

This sequencing is far from optimal. It reduces procurement to a cost-cutting centre and buyers to order placers who haggle, when their market knowledge could contribute far more to the company's profitability. In this setting, buyers are commonly found spending 80% of their time placing orders : they supply more than they buy.

The strategic plan — growth, margin, security of supply, decarbonisation — is largely played out at supplier level. Tapping into the category expertise of these teams and building your buyers' skills is the key to optimal profitability.

A simple test : ask five buyers to name the three priorities of the strategic plan. If the answers diverge, alignment does not exist.

Procurement then works to its own agenda — savings, panel, compliance — while the Executive Committee expects something else : securing the resource, honouring a customer commitment, opening up a premium range.

Two parallel tracks : never contradictory, never truly convergent either.

A strategic plan does not convert mechanically into a savings target. It has to be translated. Every company ambition must find its procurement counterpart : measurable, owned by someone, and grounded in hard data.

Without data, you are navigating in fog.

Spend does not tell you the stake. A category that is modest in euros may concentrate a major risk of disruption, or the bulk of the carbon footprint. Resources go where exposure is high.

Rank your optimisation priorities and categories to set a clear course against real stakes.

Alignment is not an away day, it is a cadence : a quarterly procurement committee with the CEO and CFO, a shared dashboard everyone understands, and arbitration based on formalised projects.

Without a standing forum, everything unravels within three months.

The shift shows up in one detail : is the buyer consulted before the decision, or after ?

The procurement departments that carry weight are those that bring the Executive Committee what no one else holds : knowledge of upstream markets, of the balance of power between suppliers or origins, of supplier innovation, of cost trajectories. That material changes the conversation and le light toward Procurement team.

The debate is no longer about a savings percentage ; it becomes about building value-creation scenarios.

That is precisely where financial resilience and sustainable savings are born.

Key takeaway — An aligned procurement plan fits on a single A4 page :

• three company ambitions with their procurement translation,

• an owner per project,

• a deadline,

• and a handful of indicators / KPI.

If it does not fit on one page, it is not a strategy — it is a to-do list.

At Pockann Consulting, we equip that alignment with the 3xPerformance approach : financial performance, social & societal performance, environmental performance — so that economics and sustainability are reconciled, and the expectations of every stakeholder are read together, never in isolation.

Because a seafood supply chain cannot be steered from a single dial. ⚓