Don't build the big business case. Run the project.

Procurement leaders often tell me they want to sort out their external workforce properly. Some call that an external workforce strategy: a consistent approach across agencies, consultancies, freelancers, IT service providers and other external specialists.

So they start building the business case and looking for the budget.

My answer is usually the same: do that, and you will still be talking about it in five years, with neither the case approved nor the budget released.

This is not an argument against strategy. Procurement should absolutely have one for external workforce. The lack of it is why so much spend has grown across IT, marketing, consultancy and professional services without any structure behind it. The argument is about sequence.

Why the big case stalls

Three things get in the way.

The first is capacity. Most Procurement teams I work with have people covering the equivalent of one and a half to two roles while requests for more headcount are refused. A Procurement transformation programme then arrives as a third job. If it adds to someone's workload before reducing it, it does not get started.

The second is assumption. Legal, Tax, HR and Finance are being asked to approve a model they have never seen operate inside their organisation. The conversation usually falls to one internal champion who did not design the model and cannot answer the hardest questions about it.

The third does the most damage. By the time a large case is approved, the business has moved. Priorities have shifted, and decisions that were sound when written are stale when they land.

The conflict is obvious. Deloitte's 2026 Global Human Capital Trends research found that seven in ten business leaders see being fast and nimble as their primary competitive strategy. That ambition does not survive an eighteen-month approval cycle.

"But we need to know where they fit"

This is the objection I hear most often. A Procurement lead put it clearly: they would not establish commercials and contracts with a new provider until he understood whether they overlapped with agreements he already had.

He is right. You should not onboard a supplier before you understand where they fit.

But you do not need to design their permanent place in the ecosystem before evaluating whether the route has merit. A contained first project still requires proper due diligence, commercials, contracting and budget. The difference is that those decisions are tied to a live requirement, limited scope and measurable outcome, not assumptions about an enterprise-wide model.

The ecosystem question still needs answering. One project gives you better evidence with which to answer it.

Start with a problem, not a programme

Find one live problem. Not a category review or landscape assessment. Something that is not working: a cost pressure, a capability you cannot access internally or a date you are about to miss.

One CPO I worked with started with a single cyber-security problem. That was the entire scope of the first engagement. The programme grew far beyond it, but it began because something specific needed solving, not because anyone had secured approval for an enterprise-wide programme.

Two things determine whether that first project goes somewhere or quietly ends.

First, bring the other functions into the room from the start. Do not go away and sell the model to Legal and Tax yourself. They will have questions about classification, tax treatment and IP, and they need answers from the people who can give them. A champion sent off alone to defend a model they did not build is a champion who stops championing.

Second, let the business take the credit. The most valuable outcome is not the saving. It is a business stakeholder telling a peer that something worked. That travels faster than any internal presentation and without the friction that comes when Procurement makes the case.

What this looks like next week

On the next suitable request, ask whether the usual route is genuinely the best fit or simply the default. If there is a credible alternative, compare both against the same requirement on cost, speed, risk, compliance and quality.

The incumbent may be the right answer. That is worth knowing rather than assuming. I say that as the co-founder of a business that provides external specialists: we turn down projects when the incumbent, a consultancy, a permanent hire or another specialist provider is a better fit. The goal is not to replace one route with another. It is to match the work to the right one using evidence rather than habit.

Build the strategy from evidence

Strong external workforce strategies are rarely written first. Organisations solve one problem, then another, and formalise the model once they can see what works.

That strategy is considerably easier to approve, because by then nobody needs convincing.

Start small. Prove value. Scale fast. In that order.