Services Procurement Survey 2026 Results

Executive Summary

Services procurement is becoming an increasingly important area for organisations facing greater complexity, financial pressure and risk. As businesses rely more heavily on third-party services to deliver projects and critical work, Procurement teams are looking for greater visibility and control over how those engagements are bought, managed and delivered.

This year’s results highlight a growing gap between the way services are bought and the level of visibility organisations have once the engagement is underway. Scope changes, additional work, supplier performance and evolving requirements can make it difficult to maintain a clear view of what has been agreed, what has changed and what the business is actually committed to.

The findings also show that this is not simply a sourcing challenge. Organisations are looking across the full services lifecycle, recognising the need to connect scope, spend, delivery, supplier performance, risk and outcomes. With services often managed across different teams, systems and processes, creating that connected view remains a significant challenge.

Technology has an important role to play in addressing this. The results suggest that many organisations are still relying on a mix of processes and systems that were not designed around the complex nature of third-party services, while only a small proportion have adopted technology designed specifically for this area. At the same time, there is clear interest in AI, with every respondent open to exploring how it could improve services procurement. This suggests an emerging opportunity to use technology not simply to automate administration, but to improve visibility, consistency and control across the lifecycle.

The results suggest that the opportunity for Procurement is to move beyond managing individual transactions and help create a more connected approach to third-party services. Greater visibility across scope, spend, delivery, supplier performance and risk can give Procurement a stronger basis for managing engagements, while giving the wider business a clearer understanding of financial commitments, emerging issues and the value being delivered. For C-suite leaders, that means greater confidence that an increasingly important area of spend is being managed with the same visibility and control as other major cost categories.