Sourcing in practice | Session 12

The Category Strategy on One Page

Buying is reacting to the next deal. Sourcing is running a category with a plan. The four questions in order, the one page canvas with numbers in every box, the supply market read for power rather than logos, the picture assembled live from the estate, and the roadmap of five sequenced plays. With briefings from the advisory desk. Recorded August 2026.

The first two minutes play for everyone. The full session is available on request with a work email.

What this session covers

If someone asks what your plan for a category is and the answer is a list of upcoming renewals, that is firefighting with a calendar. A category strategy answers four questions, in order: what do we spend, what does the supply market look like, what does our demand look like, and only then, where is the leverage.

Live on the sample workspace, the category picture assembles itself: the portfolio masthead with the spend, the market gap and the renewal exposure, the estate benchmarked vendor by vendor, the contracts ledger as the inventory, and the twelve month board with the roadmap's dates already laid out.

Between the segments, the advisory desk covers the anatomy of a real category strategy, how to read concentration, posture, switching cost and deal evidence in the supply market, the three rules that sequence a roadmap, and how to write your first category strategy this quarter.

Agenda