Procurement is having something of a moment. For years, the function has fought against a familiar perception: that its primary purpose is to negotiate prices, manage suppliers, enforce processes and deliver savings. Whilst that role remains important, particularly at a time when businesses continue to face intense pressure on costs, the expectations placed on procurement leaders in 2026 are considerably broader. CPOs are increasingly being asked to balance cost optimisation with growth, resilience, risk, supplier relationships, sustainability and technology adoption. At the same time, AI is promising to automate an expanding share of procurement’s traditional workload and potentially reshape the operating model altogether.
This reality has certainly hit home for Iron Mountain’s Chief Procurement Officer, Reagan Smith who views procurement transformation, not as a programme with a beginning, middle and end, but a daily commitment to challenging the status quo, building trust and proving that procurement is far more than a simply transactional function.
Smith is 18 months into his role as CPO at Iron Mountain, the global business spanning records management, digitisation, asset lifecycle management and data centre development. Within that complex environment, Iron Mountain’s Global Procurement manages billions of dollars of third-party expenditure, mitigates risk and supports go-to-market and sales activity. It is a broad, and for Smith a tempting, remit.
“I was drawn to Iron Mountain because of its tremendous growth arc,” he tells us from his office in Austin, Texas. “But, more importantly, because of the sincere commitment of our senior leadership team to invest in the development of a best-in-breed procurement function. The leadership team at Iron Mountain believes in the influential role of procurement to positively disrupt the way we operate in order to improve our organisation.” That executive backing is integral and provides him with the platform for a transformation that Smith believes is both necessary and overdue.
From six organisations to one
When Smith arrived at Iron Mountain, procurement was not operating as a single global function. Iron Mountain had historically allowed different businesses and regions to operate with significant autonomy, an approach that made sense for much of its history but created challenges as the organisation grew and integrated. “The procurement org I inherited wasn’t so much ‘one’ org as six independent orgs that had inconsistent processes, fragmented data and engagement, and varying metrics for success,” he reveals.
The opportunity, therefore, was not simply to improve individual processes. It was to create common objectives, consistent policies, shared data and a universal definition of success. “World-class teams of any type share common objectives, common process/policy, and common data. They work towards well-defined, universal goals while celebrating collective success,” he explains.
Making the business case for procurement
One of Smith’s most immediate priorities was changing how procurement measured and communicated value. Savings are traditionally the headline metric for indirect procurement, but Smith argues that the measurement of savings can be surprisingly inconsistent. “At Iron Mountain, we have been reporting savings for 10 years in procurement, but none of it ever attached to a P&L,” he tells us. “None of it ever required Finance sign-off. None of it was ever attached to specific budgets.”
Creating a unified methodology is therefore a significant transformation in itself. Procurement at Iron Mountain is now working towards a model where savings have a clear starting point against a budget and P&L line, followed by an identifiable ending point. The function is also broadening its view of performance.
Spend under management, cycle times, purchase order costs, controls and compliance, risk scoring and partnership criteria are increasingly part of the picture. Perhaps most importantly, Smith links procurement’s influence to engagement. “Improving engagement improves influence, which improves value on output,” he says.
That philosophy is reflected in the way procurement is building relationships across Iron Mountain and beyond. CBRE, for example, is described by Smith as one of the company’s most strategic partners, supporting its data centre and storage activities. “Having a partner who can help us manage that space efficiently with a single relationship is critical to our success,” he says. Contingent labour is another area where procurement is demonstrating the value of challenging established models. Smith points to Hyergenics, a specialist mid-market staffing partner, as a particularly strong example.
Iron Mountain requires a very different workforce from a conventional corporate organisation, with contingent workers supporting activities ranging from operating forklifts to moving large volumes of paper and materials through storage facilities. Smith and COO Dale Lawing pushed for a rethink of the existing model, moving away from premium-tier suppliers towards a specialist provider. The result is both a different talent pool and an almost eight-figure saving. “Those little things snowball into big things,” Smith enthuses. It’s certainly an example of the broader role he wants procurement to play: finding opportunities that sit at the intersection of commercial value, operational performance and business need.