Every quarter, Unit4 reports on statistics covering insights into the savings performed by Scanmarket by Unit4 eAuctions executed globally.
Every quarter, Unit4 reports on statistics covering insights into the savings performed by Scanmarket by Unit4 eAuctions executed globally. The statistics are provided for procurement professionals who wish to better understand and optimize their businesses to achieve higher savings and efficiency.
Scanmarket by Unit4 has been reporting these statistics each quarter since 2006, and they continue to be a highly valuable data asset to gain insights into categories and strategic sourcing trends.
Auction activity remained strong throughout Q2, with a reshuffling in the top 10 categories by volume. While overall participation held steady, the Retail – Non Food category made a comeback, having dropped out of the rankings in Q1 2025. Two categories exited the top 10 rankings: Ingredients for Food Production and Material for Construction & MRO, making way for Chemical Products as a new addition.
Services and Construction & Repair once again secured the top two positions, delivering savings of 11.97% and 14.66%, respectively. Industrial Machinery nudged up to third place from fourth, achieving 7.29% in savings. Iron and Metals dropped from third to fourth place with 9.13% savings.
The second quarter of 2025 marked a slight contraction in eAuction savings performance, with the average savings rate decreasing to 9.38%, down from 10.36% in Q1 2025 and 10.09% in Q2 2024. However, the volume of eAuctions increased by 7.19% from Q1 to Q2 2025.
Retail – Non Food made a significant return at fifth place with 7.25% in savings, while newly entered category Chemical Products debuted strongly in seventh place, with savings rates of 7.79%.
Freight & Transportation dropped from sixth place to ninth with 8.51% savings rate, and although IT Equipment dropped from ninth to tenth place, significant savings of 20.12% were achieved.
Although the average savings rate decreased slightly in Q2, the eAuction activity remained robust, demonstrating the continued relevance of eAuctions as a strategic tool for cost optimization. Q3 2024 provided a very strong eAuction savings rate, and it may be optimistic to expect a similar increase in 2025. The Q3 report will reveal all.
The average savings realized in Q2 2025 decreased slightly to 9.38% compared to 10.36% in Q1 2025.
Compared to Q2 of 2024, we saw a decrease from 10.09%.
The following chart illustrates the past five quarters of average savings across all categories ranging from Q2 of 2024 to Q2 of 2025. The green dotted line indicates the weighted average savings achieved over the five quarters.
This chart illustrates the past five quarters of auction growth from quarter to quarter across all categories ranging from Q2 of 2024 to Q2 of 2025 (both included).
The following chart shows 2025 quarters compared to 2024 quarters in terms of average savings for all categories in each quarter.
Q2 of 2025 achieved 9.38% savings on average across all categories vs. 10.09% in Q2 of 2024.
Source: Scanmarket (2025)
The ten best performing categories are reported every quarter, and we rank these categories by volume (number of auctions in the quarter) and by the savings achieved in the various categories.
This table shows the top 10 highest performing categories in terms of auction volume during the second quarter of 2025.
Rank
Chg.
Prev.
Category area
% savings
1
-
Services (temporary labour, cleaning, it & security services etc.)
11.97%
2
Construction & repair (flooring, damage control, engineering, rebuilding etc.)
14.66%
3
^
4
Industrial machinery (assembly lines, injection moulding machines, etc.)
7.29%
v
Iron and metals (tools, spare parts, cables, screws, etc.)
9.13%
5
New
Retail – Non-Food (Bags, cleaning, textiles, appliances, lamp oil etc.)
7.25%
6
Electrical and telecommunication equipment (mobile phones, batteries, scanners, electrical wires, etc.)
11.45%
7
Chemical products (chemicals, paint, cleaning appliances etc.)
7.79%
8
Packaging materials (cardboard, foils, tape, pallets, labels etc.)
14.51%
9
Freight & transportation (sea, land & air)
8.51%
10
IT equipment (stationary, laptops, printers, flat screens, projectors etc.)
20.12%
Left top-10 since last quarter
Ingredients for Food Production (Additives, Flour, Sugar, Vegetables etc.)
Material for construction & MRO (tools & hardware, brick & tiles, pipes & tubes etc.
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