Sezen Gürlek Kafaoglu is Senior Consultant in sourcing, procurement and vendor management at Leadout. In this blog, she shares what real ownership looks like in practice, and what it actually takes to build something a client will still be using years later. If you missed it, read her first feature, Vendor Management, The Untapped Space, on why the space she works in is one of the most overlooked in IT consulting. 

A complex assignment from day one 

A little over a year ago, Sezen joined Leadout as a Consultant in sourcing, procurement and vendor management. Her first assignment was a large international enterprise, one of the biggest clients Leadout works with, in scope and in complexity. 

When she arrived, a vendor strategy was already in motion, but there was no structured view of the full vendor landscape within IT. A significant budget. Dozens of spend categories. Hundreds of vendors across software, hardware, telecommunications and professional services. No consolidated picture of what was being consumed, by whom, or where the overlaps were sitting unclaimed. 

That is not a starter task. It is the kind of ambiguity most consultants only get handed once they have proven themselves for years. At Leadout, it is where (senior) consultants start. 

Building a picture from scratch 

Together with the team, Sezen took that on. She took ownership of the analysis: mapping all professional services spent across the IT department, at director level, technology by technology, vendor by vendor.  

From that analysis, she created a consolidation roadmap: a clear, defensible view of where the opportunities were and how to act on them. It got on the agenda of the CIO. Then it cascaded down to the individual teams responsible for acting on it. It didn’t sit in a folder. It became part of how the client makes decisions about its vendor’s ecosystem, and it still is, reviewed and rebuilt every year since. 

“That was the moment I knew I wasn’t just executing tasks. I was influencing outcomes.” — Sezen, Senior Consultant at Leadout 

That is the kind of independence Leadout is here to protect. No vendor allegiances, no hidden agenda, just the client’s data, the client’s context, and the root cause of the problem, followed all the way through to a recommendation someone senior enough could act on. 

A team that lets you build, not just execute 

None of this happened in isolation. Her case manager is there to align on direction, as much a partner and as a point of guidance. He challenges her to bring her own structure, her own proposal, her own point of view, and gives her the position to defend it in front of the client herself.

It is a small distinction with a big effect: the difference between a team that hands you on tasks and a team that hands you a problem and trusts you with it. At Leadout, that trust runs both ways, Senior Consultants sharing what they know, no hierarchy getting in the way of a good idea, whether it comes from a director or someone a year into their career. 

Work that keeps generating impact 

What makes this story more than a one-off win is what happened after. The annual spend analysis Sezen developed is still running, this year, led by a newer analyst on the team, using the structure she put in place. 

“When I see someone else running that analysis now, I’m proud, because I was the one doing it hands-on when it was new, and now it just keeps happening, year after year.” — Sezen, Senior Consultant at Leadout 

That is the version of growth Leadout is set up to produce: not just building your own track record but creating something durable enough that it outlasts your involvement in it and becoming the person others learn that structure from. 

Why this matters 

High-stakes clients. Real ownership from early on. A team that pushes you without micromanaging you. That combination is rare, and it is not incidental, it is how Leadout is built. If you are an experienced consultant weighing whether a move is worth it, this is the honest version of what to expect. Fewer layers between your work and the decision it influences, and colleagues who would rather see you build something than wait your turn. 

That is what Sezen did. And a year later, someone else is building on top of it. 

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