Illumino Partnership specializes in Marketing Procurement.

Formed in early 2024 it is well placed to meet the demands placed on Marketing Procurement teams within a fast-paced, dynamic and constantly evolving marketplace globally, regionally and locally.

With a background in Agencies at Havas and Omnicom, Consulting at Accenture and client-side at Johnson & Johnson its Managing Partner Nick Sparey has over 30 years of experience within the industry from all sides of the spectrum.

Illumino Partnership’s core values reside in helping Procurement teams adapt to pressures from cross-functional internal stakeholders to continuously deliver value and savings, as well as managing an increasingly complex and diverse supplier portfolio across the Marketing spend.

Nick Sparey

Managing Partner

The Marketing Procurement community as a function has developed exponentially in the past five years and is in a strong position to capitalize on its achievements. This is perhaps best highlighted by the work of the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) whose members within the Global Sourcing Board tirelessly seek continuous improvement with their Marketing counterparts. Their blueprint for success in Project Spring highlighted many opportunities for improving internal and external stakeholder relationships, but 4 key areas of progress to pursue:

Evolution of procurement processes (Process)

Improving people’s understanding of Procurement (People)

Building new performance KPIs beyond just savings (Performance)

Involving external partners to ensure a true perspective (Partners)

The role and responsibilities for Marketing Procurement teams remain increasingly complex with a myriad of stakeholders to liaise with, sometimes conflicting internal business priorities to address and a fragmented supply base ecosystem to help drive. The importance of robust category management and supplier relationship management (SRM) strategies cannot be understated in this respect. Both are critical to Marketing Procurement’s sustained and ongoing success, whilst improving the Marketing-Procurement relationship matrix is more relevant now than ever before with CPOs increasingly looking to further develop their strategic thought leadership in businesses. Ultimately, for Marketing Procurement to add value it needs to apply a robust process and set of tools to properly consider the importance of key supplier relationships.

Procurement must equally continue to invest considerable time in understanding Marketing issues and business priorities across the organisation. A strong relationship between Marketing and Procurement reduces cost, delivers more value against the budget and allows for any costs savings achieved to be reinvested back into the business. A joint, structured approach will always lead to better quality Agency relationships if there is mutual trust and respect on both sides.

It is for these reasons that Illumino Partnership has been set up, to partner and collaborate with Marketing Procurement teams globally and to provide services that will add value to key relationships with both internal stakeholders and external suppliers alike.