Case Study: Educational and Research Institution achieves $53.5M in targeted savings and procurement transformation with Protiviti

How one educational and research institution transformed its procurement organization with Protiviti’s help

The Educational and Research Institution was struggling with poor third‑party spend visibility and a highly decentralized procurement model—only about 2% of annual spend was under contracts—so it engaged Protiviti (Internal Audit, Risk, Business & Technology Consulting) to review its vendor master file, accounts payable processes and overall sourcing capabilities and to design a broader procurement transformation.

Protiviti completed a 12‑week diagnostic and then implemented a three‑part solution—strategic sourcing waves, transactional automation and communication/monitoring—plus a procurement training program for more than 50 staff. The engagement analyzed roughly 320,000 transactions, produced short‑term savings opportunities of $9.4M on $74.4M of spend (12–18 months), and identified five‑year savings targets of $53.5M (8.5%) with projected institution‑wide savings between $35M and $72M (6–11%), while improving response times, reducing cycle times and increasing contract coverage.