By Kenan Nouwailati, Michael Jonas and Gabriella Borgovan

How GCC organizations can close the procurement capability gap and build resilience in a volatile operating environment.

Across the Gulf Cooperation Council, procurement is entering a phase of significantly higher expectations. The region is delivering one of the most ambitious economic development programs in its history—shaped by sovereign megaproject pipelines, accelerating private sector growth, and intensifying localization mandates. Against this backdrop, procurement is increasingly being asked to do far more than it was originally designed to deliver. Whether organizations can rise to that challenge will directly shape their ability to execute strategy, manage risk, and maintain cost discipline in an operating environment that has become materially more demanding.

Structural causes behind the capability gap

The maturity gap in GCC procurement is not the result of isolated execution failures. It reflects deeper structural issues that have developed over time. Capital deployment across the region has accelerated at a pace that procurement institutions have not matched. Governance frameworks and professional development programs have lagged behind the growth in spend. Localization and workforce nationalization requirements are adding further pressure to an already constrained talent base.

Procurement's organizational positioning compounds the problem. In many regional organizations, the function was originally designed to enforce purchasing policy and process transactions. When procurement is engaged after specifications are locked and scopes are defined, its ability to create value is structurally limited. Late involvement in major project decisions is one of the most consistent patterns identified in our research—and one of the most costly.

Data infrastructure represents a further layer of the gap. Fragmented enterprise resource planning environments and disconnected source-to-pay workflows prevent many organizations from building a reliable view of spend or monitoring supplier risk proactively. Without that foundation, AI cannot be scaled beyond pilots into day-to-day procurement execution—regardless of the level of investment ambition.

A more demanding operating environment

The structural capability gap now intersects with a significantly more challenging external environment. Disruption to one of the world's most critical maritime corridors has placed supply resilience under acute pressure. Private shipping capacity remains severely constrained, with commercial carriers adding ten to fourteen days to standard shipping timelines through alternative routing. For procurement teams, forward planning and proactive risk management have become operational necessities, not optional capabilities.

Cost conditions have deteriorated at the same time. War-risk premiums have risen sharply, and oil price volatility has made transportation and raw material cost baselines harder to predict. Our polling of more than 100 regional procurement professionals shows that supply chain resilience has moved to the top of the strategic agenda—a significant shift from prior years when procurement priorities were more narrowly focused on cost control and transaction efficiency. Reactive, transactional procurement models are becoming operationally unsustainable under these conditions.

A framework and agenda for transformation

Defining the problem is only part of the work. The Roland Berger Nine Cornerstones of Procurement Excellence framework provides a structured standard for identifying where GCC procurement organizations fall short of best-in-class performance and how they can close the gap. Applied to the GCC context, the nine cornerstones span vision, governance and strategy; category management; project procurement; processes; organization; committees; employee management; controlling and KPIs; and systems and tools.

Our analysis translates these cornerstones into five strategic priorities that form a practical transformation agenda for CPOs and CFOs. These priorities address the mandate and governance model of the procurement function; the development of strategic category management and supplier relationships; the integration of procurement into project and investment planning at the front end; the creation of end-to-end process discipline and performance transparency; and the sequenced development of capabilities, data infrastructure, and digital readiness.

One principle runs through all five priorities: data infrastructure must come before analytics capability, analytics before scalable AI, and scalable AI before agentic automation. Sequence matters. Organizations that bypass this logic will undermine the return on their investment. The five priorities are not sequential steps—they must be pursued in parallel, calibrated to each organization's current maturity. The objective is clear: reposition procurement from an execution function to a strategic capability that strengthens resilience and creates performance advantage.