Maverick Spend – Definition, How To Avoid It + Examples

What is Maverick Spend?

Maverick spend is the unauthorized purchase of goods or services outside approved procurement policies, preferred suppliers, or negotiated contracts. In most organizations, it happens when employees bypass the standard buying process and make purchases on their own. This kind of spending reduces procurement control and makes it harder for the company to manage compliance, visibility, and supplier agreements. 

In practice, maverick spend is often linked to convenience, urgent needs, or the belief that official procurement channels are too slow. Even when the intent is not harmful, it can lead to higher costs, weaker contract value, lower spend visibility, and more purchasing risk for the business. That is why companies try to reduce maverick spend through clearer procurement rules, approved buying channels, and better purchasing systems.

6 Types of Maverick Spend

Here are the main types of maverick spend that organizations face when purchases happen outside approved procurement rules, suppliers, or contracts.

1. Unapproved supplier purchases

This type of maverick spend happens when employees buy from suppliers that have not been approved, vetted, or selected by the procurement team. These purchases bypass supplier evaluation, exposing the company to quality issues, pricing inconsistencies, and unnecessary risk. Organizations also lose visibility because spending is scattered across vendors outside the approved supplier base.

In practice, unapproved supplier purchases often happen when employees want a faster solution or prefer a vendor they already know. Even if the item is delivered successfully, the company may miss negotiated terms, standard contract protections, and centralized spend control. Over time, this weakens procurement discipline and makes supplier management more difficult.

2. Off-contract purchases

Off-contract purchases occur when employees buy goods or services outside existing negotiated contracts, even though approved agreements already exist. This means the organization does not benefit from the prices, service levels, or terms it previously negotiated with preferred suppliers. As a result, procurement savings leak away, and contract compliance becomes harder to enforce.

This type is especially common when employees believe they can find a quicker or more convenient option on their own. However, buying off contract often increases total cost and reduces the value of strategic sourcing efforts. It also makes spend analysis less reliable because fragmented transactions replace contract-backed purchasing.

3. Non-compliant purchases

Non-compliant purchases refer to transactions that do not follow the company’s procurement rules, approval flows, or purchasing procedures. The purchase may involve the wrong product, the wrong channel, missing approvals, or a failure to use the official procurement system. In all cases, the spend falls outside the standards set to protect cost, compliance, and control.

This type of maverick spend is broad because it covers many ways employees can bypass policy, whether intentionally or accidentally. It often grows in organizations where procurement processes feel slow, unclear, or hard to follow. When that happens, compliance drops and the company faces a higher risk of budget overruns, audit issues, and inconsistent purchasing decisions.

4. Duplicate purchases

Duplicate purchases happen when the same or very similar items are bought more than once without proper coordination across teams or departments. This usually reflects weak spend visibility, poor communication, or a lack of centralized procurement oversight. The result can be excess inventory, duplicate subscriptions, or unnecessary spending on items the company already has.

Although duplicate purchases may not always look serious at first, they create waste and reduce operational efficiency. Procurement teams then spend time correcting avoidable mistakes instead of focusing on strategic sourcing. Over time, repeated duplication can distort budgets and make it harder to understand real business demand.

5. Rush or emergency orders

Rush orders are urgent purchases made quickly, often without going through the normal approval and sourcing process. Because speed becomes the priority, employees may ignore preferred suppliers, skip approvals, or accept higher prices just to solve an immediate problem. This makes emergency buying one of the most common forms of maverick spend.

In many cases, emergency orders happen because of poor planning, low inventory visibility, or last-minute operational pressure. While some urgent purchases are unavoidable, frequent rush buying usually signals weak procurement control. It often leads to higher costs, lower compliance, and less predictable supplier performance.

6. Semi-controlled unmanaged spend

Some sources also describe a semi-controlled form of maverick-like spend, where purchases go through parts of the procurement process but are still not fully managed. In this case, the company may issue purchase orders and work with known suppliers, but pricing is not actively negotiated or strategically controlled. The spend is visible, yet it still underperforms from a savings and governance perspective.

This type is important because not all maverick behavior is completely hidden or fully rogue. Sometimes the problem is not total policy violation, but weak procurement involvement in categories that should be better managed. That makes this spend less chaotic than off-policy buying, but still inefficient and costly over time.

The 6 Causes of Maverick Spend

Several organizational and operational factors can lead to maverick spend, especially when employees buy outside approved procurement rules, suppliers, or contracts.

1. Lack of awareness of procurement policies

One common cause of maverick spend is that employees simply do not know the company’s procurement rules well enough. They may not understand which suppliers are approved, when contracts must be used, or which steps are required before making a purchase.

When policy awareness is low, employees often make purchases based on habit or convenience rather than compliance. Even small misunderstandings can turn into repeated off-contract buying across departments.

2. Slow or complicated procurement processes

Maverick spend also happens when the official buying process feels too slow, too bureaucratic, or too difficult to follow. If approvals take too long or the system feels frustrating, employees may try to bypass procurement to save time.

This is especially common when teams are under pressure to act quickly and see procurement as a bottleneck. In those cases, speed becomes more important than compliance, and unauthorized purchases start to increase.

3. Convenience and ease of online buying

The growth of digital buying channels has made it much easier for employees to purchase goods and services on their own. With just a few clicks, they can order from websites, apps, or vendors without involving procurement at all.

Because these options feel fast and simple, employees may choose them instead of using official procurement channels. This convenience can gradually normalize off-policy buying and reduce control over company spend.

4. Urgent business needs and poor planning

Another major cause of maverick spend is urgency, especially when teams need something immediately and do not have time to wait for the normal process. Last-minute requests, stock shortages, or weak demand planning often push employees to buy outside approved channels.

In these situations, the goal is usually to solve an operational problem as fast as possible. However, repeated emergency buying often shows that the organization has planning gaps that make maverick spend more likely.

5. Weak procurement control and poor spend visibility

Maverick spend grows more easily when procurement teams do not have full visibility into what different departments are buying. Decentralized purchasing, scattered data, and limited oversight make it harder to detect non-compliant transactions early.

Without clear visibility, off-contract purchases can continue for a long time before anyone notices a pattern. This weak control reduces accountability and makes it harder to enforce supplier and contract compliance.

6. Weak procurement strategy or policy framework

A weak procurement strategy is another root cause of maverick spend because employees are left without clear direction on how purchasing should happen. If the organization does not have strong policies, preferred suppliers, or structured buying channels, off-contract spending becomes much more common.

In that environment, even normal purchasing decisions can become inconsistent and unmanaged. Over time, the lack of a strong procurement framework leads to spend leakage, reduced compliance, and weaker supplier discipline.

7 Tips To Avoid Maverick Spend

Here are seven practical tips that can help organizations reduce maverick spend and improve compliance with approved procurement processes.

1. Strengthen procurement policies and buying rules

A clear procurement policy is one of the most effective ways to reduce maverick spend because it tells employees exactly how purchasing should happen. It should define approved suppliers, contract usage, approval steps, and the correct buying channels, so employees know what is expected before they make a purchase.

When policies are vague or difficult to find, employees are more likely to buy based on speed or habit instead of compliance. Strong and visible rules create consistency across departments and make it easier for procurement teams to control spend.

2. Improve spend visibility with better analysis

You cannot control maverick spend if you cannot see where it happens, which is why spend visibility is essential. Several procurement sources recommend consolidating purchasing data across systems and analyzing it by supplier, category, and business unit to identify non-compliant spend patterns.

Better spend analysis helps procurement teams find the who, what, and where behind off-contract or unauthorized purchases. Once those patterns are visible, the company can take focused action instead of relying on assumptions.

3. Simplify the procurement process

A complicated or slow procurement process often pushes employees to bypass official channels and buy on their own. Sources on maverick spend prevention consistently note that organizations should review the full procurement process and make it easier to use.

When purchasing steps are simple, fast, and logical, employees are more likely to follow them. Reducing friction in approvals, request flows, and system navigation helps increase compliance and lowers the temptation to make off-policy purchases.

4. Use user-friendly eProcurement tools

Digital procurement tools help reduce maverick spend by guiding employees toward approved suppliers, contracts, and workflows. JAGGAER specifically recommends user-friendly automated eProcurement solutions that integrate with ERP systems and give employees the right information at the right time.

When the system is easy to use, employees do not feel the need to avoid it. A well-designed eProcurement platform makes compliant buying faster, improves control, and supports more consistent purchasing behavior across the organization.

5. Train employees on compliant purchasing

Many employees do not create maverick spend intentionally, but rather because they do not fully understand the process or its business impact. Procurement guidance on this topic stresses the importance of helping employees understand the rules, approved channels, and the reasons behind compliance.

Training improves awareness and reduces the chance of accidental off-contract buying. It also helps employees see that compliant purchasing is not just a procurement requirement, but a way to protect savings, contracts, and supplier performance. 

6. Manage preferred suppliers and contracts more effectively

Maverick spend often increase when employees buy outside approved suppliers or negotiated contracts, so supplier and contract control matters. Procurement sources describe off-contract and unapproved-supplier buying as core forms of maverick spend, which means stronger contract usage and supplier guidance can reduce the problem.

Companies should make preferred suppliers easy to find and contracted options easy to use inside the buying process. When employees can quickly access approved vendors and negotiated terms, they are less likely to search for outside options on their own.

7. Monitor, measure, and correct maverick spend continuously

Avoiding maverick spend is not a one-time fix because buying behavior can change over time. Sources recommend identifying maverick spend regularly, measuring where it occurs, and using that information to adjust processes, controls, and procurement actions.

Continuous monitoring helps organizations catch problems early before they become normal purchasing behavior. It also supports long-term improvement by turning maverick spend reduction into an ongoing procurement discipline rather than a temporary cleanup effort.

Real-Life Example of Maverick Spend

At the University of Massachusetts, procurement was fragmented because each campus managed procurement, accounts payable, sourcing, and contract management independently. This created inconsistent procedures, policies, and technology systems across the organization. As a result, governance was weaker, visibility was limited, and maverick spend was more difficult to control consistently. According to JAGGAER’s case study, UMass used eProcurement to strengthen governance and reduce maverick spending.

How They Solved It

UMass addressed the problem by centralizing procurement through its Unified Procurement Services Team and standardizing purchasing processes across campuses. It also implemented JAGGAER’s eProcurement platform to create a more integrated and configurable procurement marketplace, which helped improve user adoption and purchasing control. In addition, the university introduced catalogs and pre-negotiated framework agreements to make it easier for employees to buy through approved channels.

The Result

This approach made compliant buying faster, simpler, and more practical, which reduced the need for employees to bypass official procurement processes. It also improved governance, increased consistency across campuses, and gave the organization better visibility into spending and purchasing behavior. In addition, the broader transformation supported stronger cost control and operational efficiency, with UMass reporting $26.9 million in savings in its first 18 months across more than 100 initiatives. This shows how centralized processes, standardized buying methods, and easier access to approved suppliers can significantly reduce maverick spend in a real organization.

Why is Maveric Spend Important?

Maverick spend is important because it directly affects procurement cost, compliance, and spend visibility. When employees buy outside approved suppliers or contracts, companies lose negotiated savings, weaken purchasing power, and make it harder to track where money is going across the business. It can also create quality, legal, and supplier-management risks because purchases may happen without the controls built into official procurement processes.

It is also important because controlling maverick spend helps organizations improve procurement performance and long-term value. Reducing it makes spend data cleaner, increases contract compliance, supports better supplier relationships, and allows procurement teams to turn more spending into measurable savings. In practice, managing maverick spend helps companies move from fragmented buying to a more strategic procurement model with stronger governance and better financial discipline.