How should your company structure for procurement success?

September 3rd, 2013

The following 20 steps will get you headed in the right direction.

Today’s post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

During a lunch meeting last week a retailer asked us what they should consider in terms of structuring their procurement professionals to fully embrace e-negotiation tools.

Our answer is certainly not a complete one, but the following points are areas that should be considered for any supply chain re-structuring including what is needed to drive success while trying to fully embrace SaaS e-negotiation technology. These steps will get you headed in the right direction towards achieving the greatest possible return on investment.

  1. Gaining executive (CEO) level and other stakeholder (Board) support
  2  Get your supply chain organization structured for success
  3. Do a detailed analysis of your direct spend
  4. Do a detailed analysis of your indirect spend
  5. Do a detailed review of planned capital project spends and allow of add ons
  6. Plan a detailed review of all contracts.
  7. Plan a detailed review of all suppliers
  8. Develop better relationships with existing suppliers
  9. Improve the performance of suppliers.
  10. Gain access to additional sources of supply
  11. Improve your view of all spend categories.
  12. Develop a detailed off shore and near shore strategies.
  13. Review all sourcing methods used today.
  14. Review all Environmental strategies
  15. Review all Product Safety strategies
  16. Create a product specification library
  17. Conduct detailed category discovery
  18. Align all of the above with your SaaS  solution providers recommended strategy
  19. Ask all department business owners to sign a sourcing collaboration agreement
  20. Streamline, streamline, streamline.

As you use the above list and grow it, it is important to remember that the job of a procurement management leader is to think outside of the box and educate while looking for innovative ways to do things better, faster and at a lower cost. And to hopefully create an environment that will inspire co-workers while doing that.

Reach out to a SafeSourcing customer services representative if you like assistance getting your procurement strategy aligned.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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