Maverick spend — purchases made outside approved contracts and procurement processes — represents 20–40% of total addressable spend in most organisations, including those with dedicated procurement functions. It is invisible on the P&L, unprotected by contract, unverified for supplier quality, and outside any audit trail. This piece examines what happens to that spend, what it costs, and why bringing it under management is the first and most valuable thing a procurement function actually does.
Maverick spend is any purchase that happens outside the organisation's approved procurement process. It is the software subscription a department head signs up for on a credit card. The consultant engaged directly without a purchase order. The energy contract that auto-renewed because nobody told the procurement team the notice period was approaching. The cleaning company that has been coming every Tuesday for eight years because the office manager organised it when the previous one left.
It is not, in most cases, the result of bad intent. It is the result of procurement processes that are slower than operational needs, approval workflows that create friction without adding value, and supplier relationships that predate the organisation's current procurement framework. People buy things the way they have always bought them, from suppliers they know, at whatever price is quoted, because the alternative — engaging the procurement function, waiting for a framework agreement, justifying the spend formally — feels like more work than the purchase is worth.
1. It costs more. Purchases made outside negotiated contracts pay whatever the supplier quotes. There is no competitive tension, no volume leverage, no framework rate. The margin the supplier applies to a one-off transaction from a buyer who is not price-shopping is typically 15–30% above what a contracted relationship would produce. Maverick spend is structurally expensive because the buyer has forfeited all their leverage at the moment of purchase.
2. It carries unquantified risk. When an organisation places a purchase through its procurement function, the supplier has typically been assessed — for financial stability, insurance adequacy, regulatory compliance, and operational capability. When a budget holder makes a maverick purchase, none of that assessment has happened. The cleaning company that has been coming every Tuesday may not carry adequate public liability insurance. The consultant engaged directly may not have professional indemnity cover sufficient for the advice they are giving. The risk is real. It is just invisible until it materialises.
3. It creates no audit trail. A purchase made without a purchase order, without a formal contract, and without a documented evaluation is a purchase that cannot be reconstructed. For organisations subject to audit — whether by external auditors, regulatory bodies, or internal governance processes — maverick spend is the category that generates the most uncomfortable questions. "Why did we pay this supplier £84,000 last year?" "I don't know, ask the marketing team." This is not an answer that satisfies an auditor.
4. It undermines negotiated contracts. When an organisation has negotiated a framework agreement with a preferred IT supplier at a discount rate, maverick spend on IT from alternative suppliers reduces the volume commitment that justified the discount. The supplier provided a competitive rate in exchange for committed volume. The maverick purchaser, buying outside the framework, is both eroding the discount and creating a relationship the organisation does not control or even know about.
5. It is structurally invisible. Finance sees the invoices. Procurement rarely does, unless the invoice triggers an approval threshold that requires procurement involvement. The spend is happening, the money is going out, but the organisation has no view of whether it represents value, what risks it is carrying, or whether it is consistent with the organisation's supplier standards and policies.
The standard response to maverick spend is enforcement — tighter approval workflows, stricter purchase order requirements, policy updates, training programmes. These interventions have a consistent track record: they reduce maverick spend in the short term, create resentment in the business, and are gradually circumvented as operational pressure reasserts itself. People do not maverick-spend because they are trying to undermine the procurement function. They do it because the compliant route is slower and more complicated than the direct route.
The intervention that works is not enforcement but friction reduction. Make the compliant route genuinely easier than the alternative. If submitting a brief through a structured intake process takes ten minutes and produces a qualified supplier recommendation within 48 hours, most budget holders will use it — not because they are required to but because it is faster and produces a better outcome than doing it themselves.
An IQ On-Site engagement typically begins with a spend analysis — a review of what the organisation is actually buying, from whom, at what price, and through what process. In most organisations this analysis reveals that 30–40% of spend is genuinely under management through negotiated contracts and approved suppliers. The remaining 60–70% is a mix of maverick spend, auto-renewed contracts that have never been challenged, and ad-hoc purchases that fall below formal thresholds.
The first phase of an IQ On-Site engagement is not running new tenders. It is mapping and categorising the unmanaged spend — understanding what it is, where it is coming from, and what the organisation is actually getting for it. This mapping exercise, consistently, identifies more value than any subsequent tender process. Not because the tender process is unimportant but because you cannot optimise what you cannot see.
IQ On-Site begins with a spend analysis. No long-term commitment. 30 days notice.