Procurement teams are responding to maverick spend with tighter approval chains, expanded policies, and stronger compliance controls. Yet unauthorized purchasing continues to challenge organizations because employees often prioritize speed over process when they need to buy goods or services. Market Dojo argues that the more important question is not why people bypass procurement, but whether approved sourcing routes are designed to be the most practical option.
If approved systems require extensive training, multiple approvals, or unnecessary administrative effort, users will naturally revert to email, spreadsheets, or direct supplier conversations to complete urgent purchasing tasks. In that environment, governance alone struggles to change behavior.
Simpler Workflows Strengthen Procurement Compliance
Market Dojo’s analysis suggests that maverick spend is more commonly driven by process friction than deliberate policy violations. Employees frequently turn to familiar manual methods when sourcing platforms make straightforward purchasing unnecessarily complex.
Those workarounds carry broader commercial consequences. Procurement loses oversight of supplier activity, negotiated contracts become harder to enforce, and finance teams gain less visibility into organizational spending. Over time, fragmented purchasing also weakens supplier data quality, making spend analysis and sourcing decisions less reliable.
Rather than introducing additional controls, the report recommends making compliant purchasing the easiest route available. When sourcing events, supplier selection, and RFQ creation can be completed quickly within approved systems, adoption improves naturally because users experience fewer barriers to completing their work.
That approach reflects a wider trend across procurement technology, where software vendors are increasingly emphasizing intuitive workflows and consumer-style user experiences alongside governance capabilities. Ease of use is becoming an important factor in whether procurement platforms achieve enterprise-wide adoption.
Technology Adoption Matters More Than License Counts
The report also challenges organizations to rethink how procurement technology performance should be measured. Owning a platform or deploying software across the business does not necessarily indicate successful procurement transformation if employees continue sourcing outside approved channels.
Instead, Market Dojo recommends evaluating metrics that demonstrate sustained usage. These include the proportion of eligible spend managed through the platform, the number of sourcing events completed, active user participation, event creation times, and the business functions that continue relying on manual purchasing processes.
The analysis also recommends demonstrating value through live sourcing events before expanding deployment across the organization. Showing measurable improvements in sourcing speed, savings, and stakeholder engagement can build confidence while helping procurement identify where existing workflows still discourage adoption.
Consumer-Grade Simplicity Is Raising Expectations
Employees increasingly expect internal procurement tools to match the speed and ease of the consumer platforms they use every day. That shift is influencing software design across enterprise applications, with vendors investing more heavily in intuitive interfaces, guided workflows, and automation that reduces manual effort. As those capabilities become standard, organizations that continue relying on complex purchasing processes may find user adoption becoming harder to sustain, regardless of how comprehensive their procurement policies are.