Primark enables a full-scale procurement overhaul while improving spending under management

Laura Cook, Director of Procurement at Primark, recently took the stage at Zip Forward Europe to share how her team built the case for a full-scale procurement transformation and got the investment to make it happen.

The challenge

Primark's procurement function was operating well below its potential. Spend under management was low, retro POs exceeded 30%, and savings were nearly impossible to track in the P&L. The team had limited supplier risk management, no guided buying, and a supplier onboarding experience so cumbersome it relied heavily on Excel. 

Meanwhile, the broader business faced mounting pressure: supply chain disruption, inflationary headwinds, rapid international expansion, a new franchise model, and an evolving regulatory landscape all demanded more.

The problem wasn't just operational,  it was a narrative one. Laura shares, "I think where we failed historically as procurement leaders is we've talked about things in terms of procurement speak, procurement language. And the board just simply don't understand it." 

According to a Gartner statistic Laura cited when building her business case, only 17% of global procurement leaders get the technology investment they ask for. "When you consider that we're the backbone of the bloodline of how our business runs," she said, "it's crazy that we're only getting seventeen percent of the investment that we ask for."

The solution

Laura and her team reframed procurement transformation as business transformation, a company-wide shift with measurable impact. Their five-slide board deck was built around business language, not procurement jargon, and structured around what Laura calls "the three Cs": cost, compliance, and customer experience.

Cost: the message was direct: "Where we are today, frankly, is not fit for purpose." They showed the board exactly where savings weren't landing in the P&L and committed to measurable outcomes, including spend under management above 85%, multi-year delivery plans with benefits forecasting baked into the budget ahead of time, and guided buying where none existed before.

Compliance: the team laid out a path from over 30% retro POs and limited supplier risk controls to robust due diligence and spend under contract above 85-90%.

Customer Experience: the focus was both internal and external, making it easy for colleagues to engage with procurement and for suppliers to do business with Primark.

Central to delivering on all three was Zip. "Zip was really at the heart of our thinking," Laura said, describing how intake and orchestration is becoming the single entry point for all procurement requests. This entry point guides stakeholders through policy automatically so they no longer need to know what the procurement policy was. For suppliers, Zip replaces the painful Excel-based onboarding process with a proper supplier portal, making it dramatically easier to engage with Primark as an external partner.

Before finalizing the investment case, the team ran a proof of concept to prove the value. "We ran a proof of concept before we put our investment case together and before we went in front of them. We proved it could work." The POC focused on two high-impact areas: supplier onboarding and professional services workflows, spend that Laura noted is "sometimes really difficult to get our arms around." Around twelve cross-functional teams participated, including legal, compliance, risk, finance, and sourcing, so that by the time they reached the board, the message was unified: "We've got all the support here from all of these critical back office functions that also are telling us this is going to be transformative for our business."

The transformation itself moved fast. Within six to eight months, Primark restructured its procurement team, stood up a GBS in Mumbai, overhauled key processes, and laid out a data roadmap — with Zip at the center of the digital ecosystem. A new Procurement Excellence function, previously just one person, now represents 25% of the team. Laura was emphatic about the connection between technology and operating model: "If you don't look at your operating model when you're considering your technology investments, particularly in terms of intake and orchestration and Zip, you are not going to recognise that benefit. You're just not."

The results

While the program is still underway, the targets are concrete and the momentum is clear. Spend under management is on track to exceed 85%, spend under contract is projected above 85-90%, and retro POs are expected to drop to single digits. Through Zip, Primark now has a single intake entry point that automates policy management and guides stakeholders through the right process, multi-year delivery plans with guided buying, and a supplier portal that has replaced the old Excel-based onboarding experience.

The board has also embraced this new way of working, including joint supplier decision-making and enforced procurement policy compliance. Laura's closing message was simple: "Sell the story. Tell the bigger picture. Procurement transformation is so much bigger than functional transformation."