Procurement Consultancy & Managed Procurement Services. What’s The Difference?

Procurement consultancy and managed procurement services are often grouped together and naturally aligned. Still, they solve different problems, and choosing the right option for your organisation requires careful consideration. As a public sector buyer, making the wrong choice can waste time and cause avoidable disruption.

If your buying capacity is stretched, or is facing additional complexity, or programmes need to move faster without weakening governance, you’ve probably realised you need extra help. Our blog will help you with what comes next. Which type of delivery partner do you need?

The Difference In Plain English

The world of procurement, especially in the public sector, is known for its jargon and has a regrettable tendency for business-speak.

Procurement consultancy focuses on advice, design, and improvement.

Managed procurement services focus on delivery, execution, and ongoing ownership.

In practice, this means consultants and procurement consultancy businesses help you decide what to do and how to do it better. Managed service providers allow you to do the work, often at pace, with governance built in.

What A Procurement Consultancy Typically Does

Procurement consultancy services are advisory by nature. Consultants bring specialist expertise to diagnose issues and design better ways of working, which makes them ideal for supporting procurement teams during periods of complex change and transformation.

Strategy and Transformation

Consultancies often start by reviewing procurement operating models, governance structures, policies, and capability. They may conduct spend diagnostics, assess maturity, and help build a benefits case aligned with organisational objectives.

This type of work is particularly valuable during transformation programmes, mergers, or when procurement needs to evolve. Right now, many procurement consultancies are deeply involved in the UK Government's drive to utilise technology, for example, to improve efficiency and outcomes.

Category Management and Strategic Sourcing

Procurement consulting firms frequently support category management tasks, helping teams group spend, understand markets, and design category strategies. This can include market analysis, route-to-market decisions, sourcing strategies, and more. The focus is usually on creating repeatable approaches rather than running every procurement event anew.

Tender and Evaluation Support

Consultants may also support live procurements by drafting requirements, designing evaluation models, or facilitating stakeholder workshops. They often act as a ‘critical friend’ to their clients, ensuring decisions are defensible, proportionate, and aligned to best practice.

However, the key consultancy role is often a supportive one, with ownership and delivery of the procurement process typically remaining with the client and their in-house resource.

Supplier and Contract Management Improvement

Some consultancy work extends beyond discrete procurement activities and into ongoing supplier management. Procurement advice can extend into improving performance frameworks, risk management, or contract governance throughout projects, as well as in their early phases. Again, a consultant's input is often limited to supporting the design of better processes rather than taking on day-to-day management, which remains in-house and under the client’s ultimate direction.

What A Managed Procurement Services Provider Typically Does

Managed procurement services typically share the same goals as consultancy, but they offer a delivery-led rather than advisory approach. Instead of sitting on the sidelines, managed service providers take responsibility for running procurement activity on behalf of the organisation. They do the hard work and take accountability, so you don’t have to.

Imagine handing off activity from shaping requirements through to contract award and project monitoring. With specific expertise in running sourcing events, managing supplier onboarding, maintaining governance and approvals, managed service providers are often ideal for keeping procurement pipelines moving. Reporting, audit trails, and documentation discipline are usually built into the service as standard, too.

Common managed procurement service deliverables include:

• End-to-end sourcing delivery
• Tender management and evaluation administration
• Supplier governance and onboarding
• Contract award support
• Contract management & reporting
• Ongoing pipeline reporting and audit readiness

This hands-on approach is particularly effective when organisations need consistent output despite potentially fluctuating permanent headcount. Bloom’s own managed procurement service is an example of this delivery-led approach, rather than a consultancy model.

When Procurement Consultancy Is The Better Choice

Choosing to work with a procurement consulting firm is usually the right option when the challenge is structural rather than operational. External opinion and advice from tried-and-tested experts work well if you need a clear procurement roadmap, operating model, or strategy. If your internal team has the capacity to deliver procurement activities once a new direction is agreed, all the better.

For example, a public body planning a major transformation programme may bring in procurement consultants to design category strategies, align governance, and ensure compliance with the Procurement Act before any large-scale sourcing begins. Once activity starts in earnest, it can be handled by existing procurement resources.

Procurement consultancy work is often time-limited or given a ring-fenced scope. They don’t necessarily do the work, but they ensure it is actioned in line with regulations, organisational goals, and best practices.

When Managed Procurement Services Are The Better Choice

Managed procurement services are a better fit if delivery pressure is the main issue facing your procurement teams. They add extra capacity quickly, making them ideal for clients with backlogs, bottlenecks, or crunch points. If an existing end-to-end procurement process is deficient or ineffective, a managed service, from outside the organisation, provides an alternative.

For example, a small commercial team facing multiple live procurements across different spending categories may feel swamped. Engaging a managed procurement services provider simply hands off the work to the appropriate expertise elsewhere.

Costs And Commercial Models

The two ways of working typically come with different engagement, contracting, and pricing models. Procurement consultancy pricing, for example, is usually based on day rates for professionals or fixed-price work packages. Projects are often divided into a discovery phase, for a relatively small amount, before a proposal for full delivery support is made.

The scope of work drives costs for procurement consultancy services, with factors including personnel seniority and the level of specialist knowledge required. Some consultancies are moving away from this model towards innovative pricing approaches based on outcomes and share-of-gain agreements. These are worth considering carefully if the desired outcome can be clearly formulated and expressed.

Managed procurement services are usually priced differently, though we are seeing innovation in this sector as well. Monthly retainers, service-based fees, and project-based fixed pricing are all common. Pricing is less influenced by people, as with consultancy, and more influenced by the number of procurements, complexity, governance requirements, stakeholder engagement, and urgency.

In managed procurement, some models come at zero cost to buyers, with the service funded through supplier fees once contracts are awarded. These options, including Bloom’s NEPRO³ framework, can be attractive to procurement teams and are worth careful consideration alongside other routes.

In all cases, it is essential to review pricing information in light of promised outcomes. What do you get for your money? Does it represent value? All spending is coming under significant scrutiny today, and procurement support is no different.

How Each Option Supports Compliance With The Procurement Act

Both procurement consultancy and procurement outsourcing models can fully support you in ensuring your work is compliant with the Procurement Act, but in different ways. A procurement consulting firm might help by designing compliant processes, evaluation methodologies, and governance frameworks, for example. They support consistency, transparency, and defensible decision-making as your critical friend, testing and trialling approaches, and finding one that fits your organisational goals. However, key to the success of a consultancy relationship is understanding where accountability lies. An adviser can guide, but compliance sits with those ultimately doing the work.

Procurement managed services support compliance more directly through execution. They actively maintain records, manage approvals, ensure evaluation consistency, and provide a clear audit trail. This is particularly valuable where you need confidence that day-to-day delivery aligns with legislative requirements, but have limited resources to ensure it happens consistently. Bloom’s guidance on navigating the Procurement Act explores this aspect of procurement management in more detail.

Can You Combine Both? The Hybrid Approach

Yes. Many organisations use a hybrid model to create successful procurement programmes. Outside eyes and external delivery can often provide the best of both worlds. A consultancy approach may set the direction by defining strategy, category structures, and operating models. Then, a managed service provider can deliver day-to-day tasks. It’s an approach that is becoming more common throughout the UK public sector and beyond.

If you want to learn more about help with procurement through consultancy or managed services, please contact us below to speak with our team.

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