The new Indirect Procurement report 2025 from RS and CIPS highlights challenges facing MRO procurement teams.

Newly released research by RS and the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) has highlighted some of the major trends and challenges teams responsible for the indirect procurement of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) supplies. 

Respondents to the survey held procurement roles in sectors that include discrete and process manufacturing, public and private sector organisations, energy, facilities and intralogistics. Job roles included operational, managerial, tactical, professional and advanced professional levels. This relatively small segment of the procurement sector is, nonetheless, reflective of the larger whole — specifically, the pressures purchasing departments are feeling from multiple sides. 

The procurement balancing act 

Raj Patel, Managing Director for the UK&I at RS, notes that people working in procurement face some of the most challenging conditions the profession has ever seen. Not only must they wrestle with external factors such as inflation, geopolitical tensions and supply chain disruptions, but they’re also under increasing pressure to make a tangible contribution to organisations’ wider carbon-reduction efforts.” 

Of the procurement professionals surveyed, 60% reported having reduced operational budgets, while 51% felt pressure to drive more sustainable and ethical procurement practices. A significant proportion (40%) also described pressure to reduce their inventory costs. 

This pressure to reduce spend is creating what the report describes as a balancing act between cost and quality. 

Increasingly, businesses are asking procurement to do more with less. This is reflected, according to the report, by a growing number of day-to-day challenges professionals are facing. The report found that delivering annualised cost savings had become the biggest pressure for those involved in MRO purchasing. Almost half (40%) of respondents cited cost containment as their biggest pressure, compared with 29% in 2023. 

While procurement teams have always walked razor thin margins, Jane Lynch, Professor of Procurement at Cardiff Business School and Director of the Centre of Public Value Procurement, argues that “there comes a point at which you can’t take any further cost out before it starts to impact on quality. The challenge now is balancing lowest cost with highest quality, and that applies to both products and services in MRO procurement.”

Old and new 

Many of the challenges cited in the 2024 report are still a concern for procurement teams, although the report notes that the pressures they pose have intensified. Inflation and higher costs still present the biggest challenge, cited by 62% of respondents, doubling the response in 2024 which was 31%.

Managing risk in the supply chain is becoming more of a worry, up on last year’s figures of 31% to 47% this year. A higher number of respondents said they were worried about global political uncertainty (37%) than last year (20%). The issue of attracting and retaining talent remains, with 33% of respondents highlighting this versus 29% last year.

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