A new report from Accenture found that best-in-class procurement organizations (or "procurement masters" as they are called) save their companies nearly 10 times as much as it costs them to operate their organizations.

"For a company with a $1 billion spend, this means a procurement master would incur costs of $8 million and savings of $82 million," the report says, adding that, "Masters spend half as much as low performers, yet they save 30% more."

The Accenture report found that the challenge that saw the biggest gap between masters and low performers was the "lack of authority to get things done." Other areas where procurement masters differed from low performers:

• Think more strategically: "Procurement masters look and think three to five years out when planning purchases for critical business categories.
• Procurement masters also were shown to be 16 times more likely than laggards to have a dedicated sourcing analyst pool that provides support during the sourcing and category management process.