Relieving customer service pressures in financial services
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Procurement teams in regulated sectors are under greater pressure than ever. Rising compliance demands, hidden supplier risks, escalating costs, and sustainability expectations mean that the cost of failure – both financial and reputational – is higher than ever.
This article explores six core challenges in financial procurement and highlights how forward-looking procurement teams can turn these challenges into opportunities.
With the right partners, such as Datagraphic and its Aceni Mail hybrid mail solution, procurement leaders can reduce risk, cut costs, stay compliant, and meet ESG goals – without adding administrative burden.
1. Regulatory pressure: Quiet, constant, and growing
As a finance professional, you’re managing a portfolio of suppliers across comms, tech, and operations. You’ve ticked boxes, onboarded FSQS-registered vendors, and created audit trails. Then the regulator changes guidance, the legal department flags a missing GDPR clause, or a simple SLA breach snowballs into compliance risk.
In regulated sectors, compliance is never ‘done’. Procurement teams now sit closer to the frontline of risk than ever before. The challenge? Keeping your auditor satisfied with oversight, consistency, and documentation – particularly tightening FCA expectations around operational resilience, data protection, and third-party accountability.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) issued over £13 million in GDPR fines in 2023, with penalties nearly doubling year-on-year. The average penalty for non-compliance is nearly double the 2022 level, at £816,471.
Solution: Suppliers like Datagraphic ensure every communication is encrypted, GDPR-compliant, and fully auditable – reducing ambiguity and keeping procurement audit-ready. Our solution provides a secure, automated way to handle regulated, time-sensitive communications.
2. Supplier risk – Hidden vulnerabilities in ‘approved’ relationships
That supplier you vetted 18 months ago? They may now be slipping on ISO renewals, struggling financially, or quietly missing service levels. And unless you’re monitoring in real time, you won’t know until the cracks start to show.
The truth is, third-party risk doesn’t sit neatly in onboarding portals – it emerges in missed SLAs, delivery gaps, and subtle performance failings. A BlueVoyant UK study found that only 34% of companies reassess supplier risk monthly, while 95% experienced a supply chain cyber incident in the last year. Shockingly, a third had no way of knowing when a third-party issue arose, and just 11% had real-time visibility.
If you’re relying on static checks or annual audits, you’re already behind. What procurement teams need is continuous oversight – a way to spot red flags early and act before issues become crises.
Solution: Work with suppliers who provide continuous visibility. Datagraphic proactively reports ESG performance, SLA adherence, and data security, which gives procurement teams real-time oversight, long after onboarding.
3. The cost dilemma – Savings vs stability
Cutting costs is a constant ask. But shaving 10% off comms or delivery budgets shouldn’t mean compromising resilience, trust, or turnaround times.
According to the National Audit Office, the UK public sector could save £500 million within 5 years through improved procurement management. With £125 billion spent yearly on public sector third-party goods and services, the opportunity to cut costs without compromising quality is clear. However, the hidden cost of service disruption or reputational damage can outweigh any short-term savings.
As Royal Mail rates increase and digital transformation evolves, procurement leads need vendors that scale with usage, offer transparent pricing, and maintain quality.
Solution: Datagraphic helps procurement teams optimise communication spend with consolidated postage and hybrid mail – scaling with usage while maintaining SLA standards. Their hybrid mail solution ensures clients don’t overpay for underused infrastructure.
4. Supplier performance – Visibility without the admin
‘Approved’ doesn’t always mean ‘performing’. Many procurement teams rely on spreadsheets and static PDFs, leaving blind spots in supplier oversight. Nearly half of UK organisations (46%) admit they lack adequate visibility into which suppliers are impacted when disruption hits.
The reality for many supplier relationship managers is that visibility ends where onboarding begins. Once a supplier is approved, oversight often shifts into a fragmented mix of quarterly reports, email threads, and spreadsheet tracker tools built for static checks, not dynamic relationships. Even if suppliers are sending quarterly SLA reports and ESG statements, teams can lose hours. Static PDFs do not reveal trends, and inconsistent updates create blind spots – highlighting gaps between what procurement teams believe is happening and what is unfolding across the supply base.
Solution: Datagraphic integrates automated reporting into client relationships, covering SLAs, carbon metrics, ISO status, and data security. This lightens the admin load and strengthens trust, which is particularly useful for those managing multiple suppliers through assurance portals like FSQS.
5. The tech bottleneck – Procurement meets IT inertia
Legacy systems, siloed workflows, and IT resistance often stall procurement transformation. Many suppliers pass compliance checks but struggle to integrate flexibly.
Solution: Datagraphic’s IT-light onboarding enables secure, GDPR-compliant integration in multiple formats – moving procurement forward without adding IT friction.
Datagraphic provides secure, GDPR-compliant data transfer in multiple formats, supported by an in-house UK dev team. Their IT-light onboarding model reduces dependence on internal systems and allows Procurement and Oversight teams to move faster, without compromising integrity.
Sustainability pressure – Procurement’s new KPI
Sustainability isn’t a CSR initiative; it’s a key procurement KPI – particularly in financial services. Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) scrutiny extends deep into the supply chain, with buyers now expected to prove their claims, not just quote supplier certifications.
52% say ESG is already important to their corporate strategy, while 82% say they’d be willing to pay a premium for more sustainable options.
The real cost of ESG isn’t the premium; it’s the risk of partnering with vendors whose claims crumble under due diligence. A single ‘greenwashed’ relationship can unravel client trust, attract regulator attention, and undo months of careful governance. That’s why modern buyers see sustainable procurement as a safeguard; it secures long-term resilience and aligns every contract with corporate ESG commitments.
Solution: Datagraphic operates as a carbon-neutral supplier with independently approved EPDs, FSC chain of custody, and SBTi emissions targets, which gives procurement leaders full traceability. It’s not simply about operating as a carbon-neutral business. We can provide an independently approved EPD, FSC chain of custody options, and SBTi-approved emissions targets. Procurement leaders can therefore feel reassured of full traceability and measurable impact when reporting against corporate ESG goals.
A final word for procurement leaders
Financial procurement is no longer just about cost. Regulatory scrutiny, supplier resilience, and ESG accountability now shape every decision.
Forward-thinking procurement teams must work with partners who don’t just tick boxes but evolve with them. Datagraphic’s secure, sustainable, and audit-ready solutions give leaders confidence that they can reduce risk, cut costs, and stay compliant, while meeting modern ESG standards.
Learn more about Datagraphic’s secure, sustainable, and audit-ready solutions
