Influential People Affect Change Part II

April 24th, 2012

What are the initial steps you need to take in order to affect sourcing change within your organization?

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President of Operations and CTO at SafeSourcing. 

In today’s Part II of this  blog post we will continue looking at some of the ways you can begin to affect positive changes in your company’s sourcing strategy that don’t necessarily require an army of new employees or unlimited budget to do.

Policies – Soliciting executive support is one of the first steps to take to create sourcing change.  With it, the processes and partnerships and change you hope to create will have the backing that will help carry it through, especially in areas (and there will be some) where that change won’t be welcome.   This is sometimes difficult to get at first and may require some small measurable victories to help get the backing you need, but to affect big change this will be necessary.

Processes – Once you have determined you have the desire to improve your company’s purchasing effectiveness, you will need to perform an assessment of where you are today and where you would like to be.  An important part of getting to where you want to be is to make sure you have standard methods for understanding and approaching new sourcing projects.  This does not mean every project will be the same but making sure no steps are missed in the process of examining those categories is important.  Determining if an RFI should be run, or internal survey conducted, or if the category should be completely re-examined are things that should be reviewed at this time.

Partners – In today’s world there are few organizations that have the wherewithal to grow big changes internally.  It is a commonly accepted practice to enlist the aide of third party partners with the staff, resources and expertise to help with the changes you need to make.  These partners can have various levels of involvement, from simply providing eProcurement tools for you to use to full-blown consulting arrangements that will examine all of your company’s spend.  The level of involvement you look for will depend on your budget, the type of help you need and the amount of support you are getting from the executive level.  Getting some quick results to show the company can go a long way to creating greater more permanent change in your organization and outside partners are a great way to do this.

For more information about how you can begin to create positive changes in your company’s sourcing processes, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.

If you thought this page is useful to your friend, use this form to send.
Friend Email
Enter your message