The cost
On $50 million of buying, that is $2 million to $7.5 million a year — 4 to 15 percent of services spend, the range GAO published. Staff time, delay, and files Legal cannot reconstruct are how it leaves.
GAO-13-417, applied to spend you enter
On $50 million of buying, the range is $2 million to $7.5 million a year. That is 4 to 15 percent of services spend — what GAO found leading agencies recover — not 15 percent of the whole appropriation.
Low end · 4%
$2M
High end · 15%
$7.5M
4% of $50 million is $2 million. 15% is $7.5 million. Illustration, not an audit finding.
Seven commercial companies, services they sourced, savings vs. prior year. Not SLED, not a census, not 15% of total budget.
Lower cost to run procurement vs. typical peers. Their $6 million example is functional savings at a $10 billion-revenue company.
Of targeted savings, not of spend. Skipping the path can erase negotiated value. It does not take 15% of the appropriation by itself.
Munivera does not claim your agency is losing $7.5 million. The calculator applies GAO’s published range to spend you enter. Sources: U.S. GAO-13-417; The Hackett Group; published maverick-spend summaries.
If several of these are true, adding staff will not fix it. The work is the process.
Check every statement that is true in your agency. The cost is already in the budget. It just is not labeled.
Rework, status hunting, and Board-package assembly from email are paid for in fully burdened hours. That cost is real, and it is separate from any strategic-sourcing range. The agency already funds it. It just does not appear as a line item called “broken intake.”
A request that sits incomplete does not only cost the buyer. It costs the department waiting on a contractor, a bus, a roof, or a grant drawdown.
Undocumented exceptions, untraceable files, and informal closeout show up later as protest exposure, audit findings, and a Legal review of the same language for the tenth time.
Staff-time sketch
Separate from any 4–15% sourcing range: the loaded hours spent chasing a complete request. This is not a bid and not a savings guarantee. It uses volume, chase minutes, and a loaded rate so leadership can see the current habit before anyone sells software.
Hours / year on chase
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Loaded cost of that time
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Do not treat this as a recovery figure. It is the cost of the current habit. A diagnostic uses your real volume and your real procedure.
What the sources actually say
Officials at seven leading companies reported saving 4–15 percent over prior-year spending by strategically sourcing the services they buy. The sample is nongeneralizable. When GAO scaled the finding to federal services, it used the low end: 4% of $307 billion, or about $12 billion — not 15%.
World-class teams deliver procurement services at about 17% lower functional cost than typical peers. That is the cost of running the shop, not 17% of what the organization buys. Hackett’s $6 million example is annual functional savings at a $10 billion-revenue company.
Maverick buying is often reported as wiping out 10–20% of targeted savings — not 10–20% of the whole budget. On a $5 million savings target that is $500 thousand to $1 million, not $7.5 million.
The calculator applies 4% and 15% to procurement spend you enter. It does not claim your agency is losing $7.5 million. The diagnostic tells you whether the current habit is expensive enough to fix.