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Archive for the ‘Procurement Outsourcing’ Category

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HEY Leadership Teams!

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

Let’s also assume that you want to drive the greatest possible savings across the broadest range of categories in the shortest amount of time, like the next budget period; and want a sustainable process moving forward. Are you comfortable with your teams answer?

A number of issues you might consider are whether you have the requisite headcount, specifications, strategy, research skills as well as knowledge of new sources of supply to accomplish these lofty goals yourself.

Once you have settled on the fact that your existing team cannot achieve the above goal, the next question should be; what type of event services can an e-procurement solutions provider offer to help us if we can’t this ourselves?

By now, let’s assume you have come to the conclusion that there is no way possible for your team to do this alone. You now need to find a reputable eProcurement solutions provider. A quality e-procurement solutions provider should be able to ramp up to your task immediately. They should possess skills that are the foundation of their past success. These are very specific skills that enable them to run large volumes of e-procurement events in a full service mode with little guidance from you that have historically driven impressive savings on products and services over a long period of time. They should be able to provide reference to where they have done this in the past and how they were able to augment other company’s staff with little interference of their day to day work. Remember, knowledge transfer; passion, skill and required headcount to carry out these practices on a day by day basis are what drive results.

This process is provided by people behind the scenes with a very specific skill sets. If you really want to drive the greatest possible savings across the broadest range of categories in the shortest amount of time, like your next budget period. And, you already know that you cannot do this by yourself, reach out to a Safesourcing customer services account manager to see how quickly we can be of assistance.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in E-procurement Solutions, Procurement Outsourcing

Balance – An idea for the nation, an idea for your Procurement Department!

Tuesday, October 30th, 2012

Today’s post is by Debbie Wilcox, CPSM and Vice President of Sales and Marketing at SafeSourcing.

The Wall Street Journal recently revealed that a group of approximately 80 CEOs from top U. S. corporations have formed a non-partisan group to encourage our national leaders to come up with a plan. The group has raised $29 million dollars and has plans to put 30 people to work visiting key members of Congress in their home districts. They will host dinners that bring both Democrats and Republicans to the table along with budget experts and leading business executives. Ideas that will be discussed include a blended solution of raising taxes AND reducing expenses to help balance the budget. 

You can take a similar balanced approach to your sourcing and procurement requirements.  Maybe you’ve identified a number of projects with great savings potential but you just don’t have the personnel and bandwidth to get them completed. Or maybe you’ve heard of new vendors and new products for a project you have targeted but just don’t have time to do the research.

Working with a third party sourcing company to help you become more effective in your work is an option you should consider. At SafeSourcing, we help you analyze your spend and identify projects and areas for supplier consolidation. We’ll bring our list of international suppliers and our experience working with them, to bid on your projects to ensure you receive the best pricing available. We can complete the supplier research, identify comparable products and introduce service improvements.  In general, we complete the heavy lifting and present project results to you to make a decision. Yes, we will make our recommendation, but the supplier award decision is yours.

If your procurement department could use some help and balance, don’t act like Congress and hope that things will somehow miraculously change the longer you wait. Take charge of your procurement goals and even exceed your savings targets. You’ll be amazed at what you can achieve. We help our customers do it every day. We can do it for you too.

Contact a SafeSourcing representative to find out how we can design a program that meets your needs.

Posted in Procurement Outsourcing, Strategic Sourcing

SafeSourcing recently released its entire Software Suite as a CLOUD based solution.

Friday, July 27th, 2012

It’s a brave new world and changing every day. Solutions take less time to get to market due the open source alternatives to traditional development methodologies. The fact is you simply do not need the IT staff from the past to develop and support applications today.

SafeSourcing recently released our Procure to Pay Suite of applications under the SafeSourceIt™ banner as follows.

1. SafeSourceIt™ eRFX tools including Reverse Auctions
2. SafeSurvey™
3. SafeContract™
4. SafePO™
5. SafeCatalogue™
6. SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database
7. SafeSourceIt™  Product and Services Specification Library

All of the above solutions are offered as a SaaS based cloud offering and can stand alone or function as a sophisticated integrated solution. Customers can buy and use what they need when they need it at the lowest costs in the industry

If you’d like to learn more about our tools or our customers please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Business Sourcing, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool

Are you paying to much for your Retail E-Procurement solution?

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

When you review using retail e-procurement tools you may not always get what you pay for. In fact you are probably paying way too much.

There are too many companies that have been at this for a long time whose pricing formula is way too high in the retail marketplace based on what they provide.

I was speaking to a large retailer recently that had an unlimited use tool in place behind their fire wall from a very large player in the e-procurement space. The recently converted to this companies cloud based SaaS offering without a significant reduction in cost. I asked what type of savings they have been able to achieve and how many additional associates they had assigned to write RFI’s and RFP’s as well as handle events, supplier communication, hosting support, training, report generation, specification building, data collection etc. The answer was a lot.

After we had discussed at least 20 different categories, it occurred to the both of us that the savings from our cloud based SaaS events were at least a third higher than the savings from the use of the unlimited tool in either configuration.  Even if you added in our fees, the savings were still substantially higher on event by event basis with SafeSourcing. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that to many times when retailers deploy a solution internally or as a SaaS offering they default back to their old way of doing business with a new tool once the solutions provider has left. Obviously staff additions have to be calculated into the ongoing cost. Supplier research is limited, the number of participants is fewer, training is inadequate and the result is lower savings and sometimes overall quality. Older companies also do things in old ways. There are proprietary cost frameworks to the SafeSourcing solution that will also drive higher savings. I won’t share that information here.

Another way that retailers over pay, is when an older company comes in and matches the lower cost of doing business with a newer and better provider in order to win the business. An example of this is the cost of IT infrastructure in an open source world. As such the model will not last because many of these older companies are not structured in such a way that will allow them to absorb these lower fees profitably over time. Over time your price will continue to rise. In fact next year, your price should go down if you are running the same event again. Hasn’t most of the work already been done in the past?

Some good questions to ask your prospective solutions provider would be the following.

1. How many events per month can one associate host?
2. What are you doing to automate your solution in order to take out cost?
3. Will we pay the same in year two as we paid in year one for identical events?
4. What percentage of your associates work virtual?
5. Is your cost higher because of your investment in office space?
6. Is your cost higher because of your headcount required to run events?
7. What are your average savings for events over $100K?
8. What are your average savings for events under $100K?
9. Can you even run events under $100K?

There are certainly more questions but you get the idea. Be careful out there. If you want the lowest cost and the best service in the industry give SafeSourcing a call.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, Procurement Outsourcing, Retail Supply Chain

Situational Analysis

Friday, July 6th, 2012

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

Over the past few years most companies have had to face a reduction of staff, either due to the economy or due to the large group of Baby Boomers exiting the workforce.  More important than the number of staff leaving is the level of expertise companies are losing in this process from employees with decades of experience.  

Combine this with the fact that how companies are being run and the technology they are using to run it is changing frequently, it creates an opportunity for consulting companies to perform assessments to help companies begin to make the changes they need to make to stay competitive.  In today’s blog we will look at a few of these areas that are increasing in their use by companies around the world.

Telecommunications – With technology changing so frequently, it makes it difficult to know whether you’re always getting the best solution for your company. Assessment companies can ensure you are getting the maximum telecom cost reduction—often with improved services or features.  Some services that are usually reviewed are cellular, local & long Distance, and telephone systems

Utilities –Energy industry deregulation has increased the competition among suppliers, with no barriers to changing suppliers. Consultants in this field continually monitor prices and industry forecasts.  Many times they can also provide a Group Purchasing Organization for high-volume discounts.

Waste Removal – In many industries consultants can not only assist with reducing waste removal costs, but can also create a revenue stream for recyclable waste.   Expense Consulting can manage solid waste, recyclable, paper shredding as just a few.

Packaging – Besides helping to negotiate prices on product packaging, containers, and packing materials consultants can help select and specify the most appropriate type of packaging for every need.  They can also help you realize savings through optimum purchase volumes and inventory control on corrugated, packaging materials, and retail packaging.

Printing –Internet printing companies can offer significant cost savings, and digital printing and with color-matching technology as good as it is, it has virtually eliminated the need for on-site proofing and pre-press reviews. The following are some of the categories with great savings potential:  Labels,  forms, marketing material, business cards, letterhead & envelopes.

For more information about how SafeSourcing can help connect you with the right company to assess your usage and proper needs in these areas, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.

Posted in Procurement Outsourcing

I could not believe the question, but it was asked in a category manager meeting.

Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

Google or Bing certainly might help here, but in the old days we needed to know this stuff. So let me give you an old fashioned answer.

Typically this author thinks of this process in the six steps that follow

   1. When buying a product or a service a decision is required to do so.
   2. Once the decision has been made, analysis of what you are currently  buying in what volumes for use in what locations that will continue to satisfy your needs to be completed.
   3. Your purchase offer is submitted to a supplier or suppliers in order to collect pricing and other information such as the Terms and Conditions required in making your decision.
   4. A contract is signed for the product or service that outlines the responsibilities of the involved parties as well as remedies if contract terms and conditions or volumes are not met.
   5. A purchase order is issued with the appropriate approvals that match to the specifics as outlined in the contract in order to properly manage the contract.
   6. Payment is generated based on the purchase order submitted against the contract.

Sometimes there is a steep where an LOI or letter of intent is issued between step 3 and step 4 in order to take advantage of contract terms earlier in the cycle.

So now what happens if you don’t have a contract management system or a purchase order management system? Generally it’s referred to as leakage. In about 12 months you will be very familiar with it.

Contact SafeSourcing and let’s see if we can help you out with our procure to pay solutions.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Procurement Auctioning, Procurement Company, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Product Procurement

Retailers; is your sourcing transparent enough?

Wednesday, April 6th, 2011

If you are not sourcing at least 30% of your cost of goods and services using e-procurement tools, you are lagging your industry leaders as well as being significantly behind other industries. As such; you are not getting the best costs and not driving the best margins for your company.

Reverse auctions since their inception more than a dozen years ago haven driven healthy competition amongst supplier companies. As such the results of a reverse auction can provide a great benchmark for both the buyer and the supplier. For the buyer the results can be used as a tool to evaluate how to best source other products and services. Additionally suppliers that are not the low quote or winning bid now have the opportunity to evaluate why that is and what they need to do in order to improve or to be more competitive in the market place. This of course is all happening without the need to collect, collate, compare or negotiate during the process. In other words it is happening transparently to the normal sourcing process. I watched a reverse auction today where 4 suppliers placed 180 quotes for a dozen line items in under 30 minutes. No buyer can do that. Additionally reverse auctions provide the opportunity for suppliers that are outside of your business area or knowledge base to bid for your business.

Possibly the single largest area of benefit to reverse auctions outside of price compression  for  procurement professionals  is that it offers  a significant opportunity for process improvement since most solution providers offer a standard process for hosting reverse auctions. Everything is done in one place using standard processes in building the event to the final analysis of the bids collected. Information availability is immediate for evaluation and is archived for easy access in the future. This reduces the overall procurement life cycle, eliminates or reduces the opportunity for human error, and provides a standard way to conduct and award business.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool

Where does the retail spend data you need for procurement reside?

Wednesday, October 20th, 2010

The problem today is that there is so much retail data available that buyers and category managers could easily suffer business paralysis by data analysis.

Below is just a partial list of systems and places where data resides that is meaningful if not critical to sourcing professionals. Most of you can probably add to this list pretty easily. The unfortunate issue that confronts  retail procurement professionals daily is that most of this data is not integrated in any way and even at very large companies,  to much critical data is sitting on local employee desktops or even worse in their heads. And that is not what we mean by a neural network.

1. ERP systems
2. Enterprise Data Warehouse systems
3. Replenishment systems
4. Financial reporting systems
5. Demand Planning systems
6. Purchase Order management systems
7. Distribution and Logistics systems
8. Merchandise management systems
9. Retail Planning systems
10. Local employee desktops
11. Contract management systems

Number two from above the enterprise data warehouse is probably the most logical place to bring all of these data sources or elements together within one logical data model that drives the master data source integrated with a s business reporting and  busyness intelligence front end. Small companies may never make it to this level, but if they can find a business partner that offers these solutions in a SaaS format it will be much better than the current; Hey  Joe, how many of these did we order last year?

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in Business Sourcing, E-procurement Solutions, Global E-procurement, Procurement Company, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions

E-procurement.What’s in a definition?

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

I was reading a blog post from the Doctor over at Sourcing Innovation today titled “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to e-Procurement: Terminology” and I thought it was great as well as very timely.

Ultimately it is up to practitioners and solution providers of these tools to educate their customers as to what the proper terms are for the tools they are using. As an example E-RFI, E-RFP, E-RFQ. I have numbers of customers that have used other solution providers and not only are the definitions different by customer; they are actually different within a specific company. In some cases everything is referred to as a reverse auction and in other situations the companies have made up their own name for the service or tool.

This author uses Wikipedia and Wictionary quite often as a source and in this case, they have a very good definition that covers most of the terminology in the entire e-procurement space as well as related B2B and B2C internet based or private network based functions. As your company moves in the direction of a computerized supply chain management solution for your company understanding what you are asking for and what you are using will make both your job and that of your solution provider easier.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, B2b Supply Chain, E-procurement, E-procurement Solutions, E-procurement Tools, E-supply Chain, Eprocurement Auction, Online Procurement, Online Reverse Auction, Procurement Auctioning, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Purchasing, Procurement Solutions, Procurement Tool, Product Procurement, Reverse Auction, Reverse Auction Procurement, Supply Chain Procurement

So, just what is a retail market exchange?

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Quite honestly this is a fairly complex question so the answer is not simple. To begin with let’s take a look at just what a market (retail) exchange is.

One of the earliest exchanges in the retail space was called the Retail Exchange which was sponsored by some very large retailers and is still available today from a company that bought the system from its retailer sponsors. As simply as possible, a  Market (Retail) Exchange  is a business to business or B2B E-commerce platform that allows Suppliers, Resellers, and their customers or buyers to offer, purchase and manage their goods and services in a simple and effective way. Typically an organization must be a member of the exchange in order to participate. Once a member the organization can then conduct business with other organizations by establishing on line connections with each other. Typically exchanges are a shared hosting environment and in some cases for very large companies dedicated server implementations. In recent years exchanges have migrated to SaaS or software as a service models in order to address wider markets.

The success of an exchange is based on the number of suppliers or resellers that belong to it and their willingness to participate with a retailer for their business. The activity is more of hands off approach once your offer is posted that can include punch outs to a supplier’s website and catalog services for sourcing of products.

From my perspective I like the personal touch of the historical RFX process in the form of a SaaS full service offering that actively engages new sources of supply and sells them on wanting your business.  There is a much smaller investment from both a financial and resource perspective. If you want to learn more about the RFX process please visit SafeSourcing Blog archive or the SafeSourcing Wiki.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Posted in B2b Reverse Auction, B2b Supply Chain, E-procurement Solutions, Online Procurement, Procurement Outsourcing, Procurement Solutions, Retail Supply Chain

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