Payne Strategic Advisory
Charlotte Payne, MBA, MCIPS Chartered

Organisations buy capability, certify it, and then quietly lose it.

Payne Strategic Advisory is an executive-led consulting practice working at all three points – procurement and commercial capability across organisations, and operational, digital and governance transformation inside professional bodies and membership associations.

Led by Charlotte Payne – twenty-one years at a chartered professional institute, latterly as General Manager and locally appointed director for Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific. UK-based, working across the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

What the practice does

Procurement and commercial capability

Building the commercial judgement, contract management discipline and supplier governance that strategies quietly assume are already in place.

  • Commercial and procurement capability assessment
  • Operating model and category structure
  • Contract management and supplier governance
  • Capability development and professional pathways
  • The effect of AI on commercial judgement and the talent pipeline

Transformation in professional bodies

The qualifications, assessment, CPD, membership and delivery machinery that decides whether a credential still holds its value in ten years.

  • Qualification and assessment strategy
  • The pathway to computer-based assessment
  • Examiner, marker and faculty capacity
  • Make-versus-buy of operational activity
  • Member journey, digital workflow and governance
These are not two businesses. A professional body exists to build and certify capability. A procurement function lives or dies on it. Twenty-one years at the chartered institute that sits between the two is what allows both to be done credibly by one person.

Track record

21 years
at a chartered professional institute
80,000+
exams a year delivered across 100+ countries
17
countries and territories worked in
$3M
regional portfolio led as General Manager

Rotation through quality assurance, assessment delivery, qualifications and standards, education partnerships, product ownership and full profit and loss general management. Along the way: three digital platforms built to replace manual operations, a government procurement capability programme in Africa, and a regional business taken from a 13% membership decline to 13% growth with 22% revenue growth.

An academic foundation in physics, an MBA in strategic procurement and MCIPS Chartered status. Analytical by training, and inclined to argue the other side of a position before agreeing with it.

How engagements work

Engagements are short, senior and decision-shaped – strategy and options work, operating model and process redesign, capability assessment, facilitation, and sequencing programmes that everyone agrees with and nobody has ordered. Clients typically operate in complex, multi-jurisdictional or regulated environments. Advisory retainers, fixed-scope projects and facilitated workshops are all available. Australian clients can be engaged and invoiced locally.

Get in touch

If your commercial ambition has outrun your commercial capability, or your qualification and assessment model no longer fits how people actually learn, that is the conversation I enjoy most.