A clearer view of how Zenith works.

Three levers. Price: pooled member volume moves your companies into national-account tiers. Specification: buying the right item rather than the premium default that got specified years ago and never revisited. Consolidation: fewer suppliers, less off-contract buying, and enforced compliance.

The range is wide because starting points vary. A company that has never looked at indirect spend has more available than one that runs a disciplined procurement function.

Indirect, non-strategic spend: office supplies, small package delivery, telecom, IT, MRO (maintenance, repair and operating supplies), printing, packaging, rental car, janitorial, promotional items and office furniture. Facilities services, freight, uniforms, fleet, safety supplies, waste and temporary labor may also qualify.

If a category is indirect, fragmented and not strategic to the business, it is worth putting through the assessment. We do not touch direct materials or any category your management teams treat as competitively strategic.

Baseline unit pricing and usage come out of the expenditure assessment. After onboarding, contracted pricing is compared against that baseline on a like-for-like basis and reported by company and by category. If an item specification changes, we benchmark the equivalent rather than claim credit for a downgrade. Your finance teams see the underlying detail, not just a headline number.

Project-based sourcing tends to erode: the consultant leaves, contracts lapse, and pricing drifts back. Here the contracts are held and managed, compliance is tracked, and categories are re-benchmarked on an ongoing basis. The savings are maintained rather than delivered once.

Usually yes, because most initiatives target direct spend or one or two large categories. The indirect tail is fragmented across dozens of suppliers and sits below the threshold where anyone owns it. The assessment will tell you honestly. If a category is already well priced, it shows up as such and we leave it alone.

Through supplier administrative fees of 2 to 2.5% on spend routed through Zenith contracts. Those fees are disclosed to you and to your portfolio companies.

It is the right question to ask any GPO. Every benchmark we show you is net of the administrative fee, measured against what a company of your size actually pays buying direct, so you are comparing true landed cost, not a gross discount. The fee is funded by the supplier out of the volume and lower cost-to-serve that aggregation creates, not added on top of your unit price.

No. Portfolio companies pay no participation fee and no ongoing fee. Operations are funded by the supplier administrative fees described above, so a company's only economics in this program are the savings it captures.

Yes. Member firms receive equity in Zenith. The specific structure is discussed directly with each firm.

AP and GL detail covering the trailing twelve months, current supplier contracts in the major categories, and one finance contact per company for follow-up questions. Time commitment is typically a few hours per company.

Where a company's internal detail is thin or purchase history is not readily exportable, we can obtain selected line-item data directly from the incumbent suppliers: item, unit of measure, unit price and usage. That takes most of the lift off your finance teams and gives true SKU-level visibility rather than a summarized GL view. Assessment takes 3 to 4 weeks across a full portfolio.

The work is done at the item and supplier level, not at the category summary level:

• Price benchmarking: your current contracted and invoiced pricing against Zenith contract pricing and against what comparable companies of your size actually pay.
• Unit price comparison: like-for-like at the SKU level, normalized for pack size, unit of measure and specification.
• Last-time-bid review: when each category was last competitively bid or renegotiated, the contract terms, and how far pricing has drifted since.
• Supplier consolidation analysis: how many suppliers are used per category, how fragmented the volume is, and what consolidating that tail is worth.
• Specification and SKU rationalization: where a premium item was specified years ago and never revisited, and where SKU count can come down without affecting the operation.
• Off-contract spend: buying outside existing agreements, quantified by company and by category.
• Usage and demand patterns: volume, order frequency and drop size, which drive tier eligibility and freight terms as much as unit price does.

The output is a savings target by company and by category, with the item-level detail behind each number so your teams can audit it.

You and your management teams receive savings targets broken out by company and category. Nothing moves until those targets are reviewed and approved. Approved categories then onboard onto existing contracts, and companies are typically transacting on new pricing within 30 to 45 days.

No. Participation is opt-in by company and by category, and the model tolerates partial participation. A company that sits out is simply not in the program.

Because we contract with leading suppliers under defined requirements for pricing, quality, delivery and service levels, a company reaching the 10 to 20% range is not trading service down to get there. Savings land in that company's own P&L, with no fee and no procurement headcount required to capture them.

You keep it. The assessment surfaces where you are already competitive and we do not move that category. We are not interested in claiming savings that do not exist; it would show up immediately in the tracking.

No. Contracts, supplier relationships, service levels and performance management sit with Zenith. Portfolio companies transact; they do not administer.

Your data is not shared. Company-level spend, pricing and supplier detail stay confidential to you and are used only to build your baseline and to negotiate on aggregate volume. Nothing is attributed to a member or a portfolio company in any supplier discussion, and no member sees another member's numbers.

The pricing stays with the company. Contracted pricing and program participation transfer with the asset rather than terminating at close, so the savings you built are durable through a sale. A buyer is underwriting a cost structure that holds, not one that reverts the day they take ownership.

Industry leaders. We typically contract with the largest suppliers in each category, chosen for service level and cost position rather than lowest headline price, so your companies move to a stronger supplier base, not a cheaper one. Contracts carry defined requirements for pricing, quality, delivery and service levels, and supplier performance is managed centrally.