Two specialists in the world of procurement – Procura and Lifecycle Management – have merged to form Rethink Group, a business with over 80 professionals across the UK and US.
Founded in 2015, Procura is an award-wining management consultancy that helps its clients with transforming their procurement function and reaping the benefits from procurement excellence across their value chain.
Procura operates with offices in London and Chicago and works for both private and public sector organisations, as well as private equity groups.
Established over 30 years ago, Lifecycle Management is an end-to-end provider of contract management services. The Oxford-based firm helps its clients with identifying improvement potential, delivering tenders, through to ongoing contract management over the entire contract and supplier lifecycle.
Alongside providing advisory and resourcing solutions, Lifecycle Management also has its own technology platform OPTIMiSe, which currently manages around £450 million worth of contracts (primarily for education and healthcare institutions).
By now joining forces, Procura will be able to both deepen and broaden its offerings, said James Ball, a partner at the firm in London. “Combining forces with Lifecycle Management enables us to even further enhance our procurement capabilities to deliver better solutions for any sized client in any sector.”
The merger in particular provides Procura with an expanded client base in the UK healthcare sector. “Lifecycle Management delivers an outstanding service to their primarily NHS client base and has over the years helped the NHS save over £200 million in spending.”
The move meanwhile sees Procura extend its lines of business from consulting to managed services, which will help the firm deliver a more end-to-end offering to its clients. “It greatly strengthens our value proposition to existing and new clients,” said Ball.
For Lifecycle Management, the joining of forces sees the group add Procura’s strategic expertise to its knowhow, enabling the company to better advise its clients on the steps needed for achieving cost savings, driving improved supplier performance, and delivering transformation and sustainability objectives.
The deal comes at a time of growing focus on procurement as a strategic enabler of business objectives, with the pandemic and current war in Ukraine demonstrating business reliance on procurement excellence for cost control, availability of raw materials, and profitability, among others.
In other deals in UK’s procurement consulting space, last year Ayming acquired the procurement consultancy wing of Ayming, and Elixirr purchased specialist player Retearn. On the global stage, Bain & Company recently bought ArcBlue (Australia) while Kearney bolted-on Prokura (Nordics).
