About 5 Rights Ltd
5 Rights exists because procurement problems are consistently misdiagnosed. Organisations invest in capability. They hire consultancies. They run transformation programmes. And yet the friction persists, the value doesn't land, and procurement still feels like it's working against the business rather than with it. In most cases, the capability isn't the problem. The misalignment is.
Why I started 5 Rights
Over more than 20 years working across procurement and commercial transformation — in Formula 1, defence, nuclear, infrastructure, utilities, manufacturing and the public sector — I kept seeing the same pattern repeat itself.
Capable procurement teams being blamed for problems that were never theirs to own. Leadership misalignment being diagnosed as a capability gap. Generic consultancies arriving with predetermined frameworks and leaving with invoices that bore no relationship to value delivered. Hideously expensive transformation programmes that consumed years of effort and delivered little that stuck.
The common thread was never incompetence. It was misalignment — between what procurement was designed to do, what the organisation actually needed, and what leadership was prepared to support.
I started 5 Rights because I believed there was a better way to help organisations think about procurement. Not by chasing the highest maturity stage. Not by applying the same model regardless of context. But by asking a more honest question first: is procurement fit for purpose for this organisation, at this point in its development?
That question — and the structured thinking required to answer it properly — is what 5 Rights is built around.
How 5 Rights works
5 Rights operates as a founder-led advisory. That means every client engagement is led directly by Ian Wood — not delegated to a junior team once the work is sold.
The approach is deliberately not prescriptive. 5 Rights does not arrive with a pre-built solution or a fixed transformation methodology. Every engagement starts with understanding the organisation's context, pressures and priorities before any intervention is defined.
This matters because the right answer for one organisation is often the wrong answer for another — even when the presenting symptoms look identical.
The frameworks 5 Rights uses — including the ADEPT diagnostic — are tools for structured thinking, not templates to be imposed. They support judgement. They do not replace it.
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Context Led
Shaped by organisational strategy, growth trajectory, risk appetite and operating reality — not by generic best practice.
Proportionate
Capability should be sufficient and deliberate. 5 Rights is as likely to recommend simplification and restraint as it is transformation and investment.
Outcome-focused
The point is confident leadership decisions and sustainable performance — not activity, not reports, not maturity scores.
About the Founder
Ian Wood is a senior procurement and commercial transformation leader with more than 20 years' experience working with organisations through growth, change and increasing complexity. His career spans Formula 1, automotive, defence, nuclear, utilities, infrastructure, manufacturing, science, technology and the public sector — environments where procurement decisions carry real commercial, operational and reputational weight.
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Ian works directly with senior leaders and executive teams to diagnose where procurement is misaligned, define what excellence should look like in context, and identify what must change — and what should not. He leads the ADEPT diagnostic approach personally and is involved throughout every engagement, from initial conversation to final recommendations.
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He is a Chartered MCIPS professional, a Transforming Public Procurement Advanced Practitioner, and an Associate Member of the Institute of Collaborative Working, with extensive experience operating at executive and board level.
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A founder-led advisory, backed by specialist depth
5 Rights engagements are led directly by Ian Wood. Where the scope of an engagement requires specialist depth — in governance design, contract and supplier management, AI enablement, regulatory assurance, or operating model change — Ian draws on a trusted network of senior practitioners with whom he has worked across complex public and private sector environments.
Associates are engaged selectively and confidentially, based on the specific requirements of each client. Every relationship, from first conversation to final output, remains founder-led.
This model is intentional. Clients engaging 5 Rights receive consistent senior involvement — not a team that varies with every project or a junior resource dressed up as expertise. Every engagement
remains senior, focused, and proportionate.
Core areas of expertise across the collective include:
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Procurement and commercial transformation
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Governance, policy, and regulatory assurance
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Contract and supplier management in complex environments
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Process, performance, and operating model optimisation
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Systems, analytics, and responsible AI enablement
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Ian Wood
Founder &
Principal Consultant
Why the name "5 Rights"
The name comes from one of procurement's oldest principles: securing the right quantity, quality, price, time and place. Those foundations still matter. But they were designed for a simpler world.
Modern organisations need procurement to do more — to align to strategy, respond to growth, manage risk, and create confidence at leadership level. The old five rights are necessary but not sufficient.
5 Rights takes those foundations and evolves them into a contemporary framework: Alignment, Direction, Enablement, Performance and Transparency — ADEPT. A framework designed not to describe what procurement should look like in the abstract, but to define what it should look like for your organisation, in your context, at this point in time.
If something about the way procurement is working — or not working — has prompted you to read this far, it is probably worth a conversation.​