How to insure the sustainability of e- RFX events for your customers.

July 13th, 2018

There is a proper way to insure the sustainability of your e-RFX events going forward.

 

Todays post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

If you follow these simple guidelines it will also encourage senior management to consider placing more of the companies spend under the umbrella of e-procurement tools and specifically reverse auction tools.

Once you are armed with a robust detail focused supplier database and related e-procurement tools:

1. Conduct a detailed category discovery
a. Learn all there is to learn about the customers way of doing business.
b. Walk, observe and annotate all activity at distribution centers and warehouses.
c. Walk an array of stores and review all formats of the enterprise.
d. Compile a list of all corporate categories
2. Rank categories by
a. Total spend
b. Importance
c. Sourcing frequency
d. Quality objectives
e. Look for aggregation opportunities
i. Lighters, lighter fluid, flints, fire sticks.
3. Conduct supplier discovery
a. Rank suppliers
i.   Size
ii.  Experience
iii. References
iv. Environmental certifications
v.  Safety Certifications
4. With all of the above in hand; develop a three year game plan
a. Identify suppliers for each event over the three years
b. Develop savings targets by category
c. Develop a three year time line  for all categories
5. Role Play internally  the first year for a test category
a. Ask the following questions
i.   How will you award the business
ii.  Review alternate scenarios
iii. Review savings by scenario
iv. Determine which suppliers will be invited back
v. Determine what new suppliers from your database search will be invited during the next year or cycle.

I’m sure you can fill in a few more items prior to your launch, but the key is to have a plan and to write it down. Now you do.

If you’d like Safesourcing to conduct a cot neutral 2 day discovery session for your procurement team, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Services Account Manager.

We  look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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