Nobody designs a procurement function to end up like this. It just happens — a category added here, a specialist hired there in response to whatever crisis was loudest that quarter.
A decade on, the structure reflects your history, not your strategy. Three signs I look for when I suspect that's what has happened:
Category managers who can't tell you why their categories are grouped the way they are. Not because they're bad at the job — because the grouping was never actually a decision. It's a leftover from a restructure two CPOs ago, and everyone has simply been working around it since.
A governance model that exists on paper only. There's a delegation matrix, of course, but ask five people what actually needs to go to the category council before approval and you'll get five different answers, all delivered with total confidence.
And this one costs the most — a team that's excellent at buying and mediocre at managing what's already bought. Sourcing gets the headcount, the training budget, the attention. Contract and supplier management gets whoever is left over, or it's simply lost in the org chart somewhere. That imbalance almost always traces back to a function that grew to solve immediate problems, rather than one designed around the full value chain.
None of this is cause for panic. An operating model that grew by accident can be redesigned on purpose — same people, often, just organised around what the business actually needs rather than what history left behind.
The redesign is usually less disruptive than people expect, because most of the capability is already there. It's just pointed in the wrong direction.