Category Management in Purchasing is a comprehensive guide to strategic category management which provides a step-by-step guide to its implementation and use, and enables readers to deliver value and cost savings when sourcing and purchasing. Now in its fourth edition, this text has cemented its place as the essential reference for category management practitioners.


In this new edition, Jonathan O'Brien shows how a strategic approach needs to integrate with other approaches, such as supplier relationship management and how the procurement function negotiates. Additionally, this new edition includes some new insights, based upon the experience of senior practitioners in industry, on how to make category management a success in the organization. It also includes some general updates and contextualizes the future procurement function and an ever increasing digitally enabled, de-globalized, post Brexit world. There is also additional material on the effect of international developments on procurement, updated tools and templates, and examples of how these have been successfully used in industry. Category Management in Purchasing, 4th edition connects theory and practice and provides readers with the tools to analyze complex sourcing situations quickly and clearly, and so develop innovative and creative proposals for sourcing.