As the economy teeters between a so-called ‘soft landing’ and all-out recession, an emerging consensus across C-suites has taken shape: the time to cut costs is now. Once again, all eyes are on procurement. A recent study from CreditSafe showed an eye-popping 95% of North American manufacturers plan to push for cost reductions with their suppliers in the next six to twelve months. In this short post, we outline common obstacles to transformative cost savings and playbooks for using funnels to create alignment and enable finance and procurement to act as a true ‘power couple.’