Anonymised but real. Control had drifted, no one could put a number on it, and the answer was already sitting in PO, invoice and contract data — it just hadn't been scored and put in front of the right people.
Their ERP couldn't report which spend was under contract — a core control signal. Spend Sphere answered it from exports they already had, and has run alongside for four years since, renewed each time.
Fastest gains came from tightening how existing contracts were used — a control fix, not a new tender.
No one could reconcile control across sites. One scorecard gave finance a single number and a trend to act on.
Across very different organisations, the score tells the same story: control drifting down while no one was watching, then turning once someone owns the number.