Executing your procurement strategy when negotiation power seems out of balance.
Today’s re-post is by Dave Wenig, Sr. VP of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing.
Dave considers how best to navigate a purchasing decision when external factors are the key drivers.
There are times when a purchaser may feel as though the balance of power in a negotiation is stacked in favor of the seller and factors such as limited sources of supply or external factors are strongly influencing the decision.
Let’s revisit a situation that retailers were facing a couple of years ago!
Retailers had been navigating through the process of implementing EMV solutions and were expected to have completed this process by October of 2015 for their in-store POS terminals. EMV, which is short for Europay, MasterCard, and Visa, is a standard for payment cards that is meant to be a more secure replacement than the magnetic stripe cards that we’re used to; although these chip cards do still have the magnetic stripes.
Their next deadline for EMV compliance was to affect the forecourt. For gas station retailers, the deadline to implement EMV capabilities at the pump was October 2017. After the deadline, the liability for fraudulent transactions will shift to the retailer if the retailer is not leveraging EMV. What this means for the retailer is that they are faced with a significant purchase with what seem to be limited options for implementation based on their existing equipment and other factors.
When faced with a decision such as this, it’s helpful to have a partner with the tools and experience to help guide you through the decision process. This is particularly important when your options seem limited or controlled by external factors like the EMV deadlines. Experience provides the confidence and the competence to develop and execute your commercial negotiation strategy. Your partner’s tools provide the capability and the leverage to balance the power in the negotiation.
In the case above, many companies contacted SafeSourcing for assistance.
At SafeSourcing we are devoted champions of saving money on just about any category that you can come up with. In fact we probably source it more often than your buyers or category managers do. All of our team member at SafeSourcing, would be excited to discuss how adding e-Procurement to your sourcing projects can improve your negotiation process. For more information, please contact a SafeSourcing representative.
We look forward to your comments.
