CPSP study guide
CPSP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The Certified Professional in Supply Management (CPSP) is a professional credential aimed at practitioners who manage sourcing, purchasing, contracting, supplier relationships, and supply risk across an organisation. It suits buyers, sourcing specialists, category managers, contract and vendor managers, and supply chain professionals moving from transactional purchasing into strategic supply management. The CPSP study guide has 8 sections and about 3,493 words.
01Supply Management Core
The Supply Management Core domain tests whether you can explain how procurement creates value across the entire source-to-pay cycle, how it is organized, and how its performance is governed and reported. Questions blend definitions with scenario judgment: who owns a decision, which metric measures the right thing, and where a process actually breaks.
464 words, about 2 min02Sourcing
The Sourcing domain tests the structured process of matching a defined need to the best supply option and converting that choice into an agreement. Expect questions on RFx selection, evaluation criteria and weighting, competitive versus collaborative strategies, and total cost of ownership.
458 words, about 2 min03Category Management
Category Management tests whether you can group spend into categories, read the supply market, and choose differentiated strategies rather than applying one sourcing template to everything. Questions typically present a spend profile and ask what lever fits, or challenge you to distinguish category management from contract management.
410 words, about 2 min04Negotiation and Contracting
This domain tests preparation discipline, the ability to create and claim value, and the translation of a commercial deal into enforceable contract terms. Questions often hinge on whether a clause allocates risk the way the negotiation intended.
437 words, about 2 min05Supplier Relationship Management
Supplier Relationship Management tests how you segment a supply base, govern the relationships that matter, measure performance with metrics that survive scrutiny, and exit cleanly when a relationship no longer fits. Segment by value and risk: strategic, collaborative, transactional and bottleneck suppliers each get a different cadence.
424 words, about 2 min06Supply Chain Risk and Resilience
This domain tests whether you can identify, quantify and treat supply chain risk, and distinguish resilience engineering from generic risk listing. Expect questions on concentration measures, failure-mode scoring, and the relationship between time to recover and time to survive.
438 words, about 2 min07Sustainability and Ethics
This domain tests how environmental, social and governance requirements are embedded in sourcing decisions, and how ethical judgment is applied to gifts, conflicts of interest and supplier conduct. Questions frequently test emissions accounting boundaries and due diligence obligations.
434 words, about 2 min08Technology and Data Analytics
This domain tests whether you understand the procurement technology stack, the data foundations that make analytics trustworthy, and which metric answers which business question. Questions typically probe data quality, spend cube structure, savings classification, and the limits of automation.
428 words, about 2 min