According to Wikipedia and others a Request for Information (RFI) is a standard business process whose purpose is to collect written information about the capabilities of various suppliers. Normally it follows a format that can be used for comparative purposes.

So a Request for Information (RFI) is primarily used to gather information to help companies make a decision on what steps to take next. RFI?s are therefore most often the first stage in the procurement process particularly with new sources of supply. They are used in combination with: Requests for Quote (RFQ), Requests for Tender (RFT), and Requests for Proposal (RFP). In addition to gathering basic information, an RFI is often used as a solicitation sent to a broad base of potential suppliers for the purpose of preparing a supplier?s thought process in preparing for a Request for Proposal (RFP), Request for Tender (RFT) in the government sector, or a Request for Proposal (RFP).

Much of the data required for an RFI is generally available and can be found on company websites, U.S. Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings for publicly traded companies in their Edgar system, industry guides from companies like Trade Dimensions, or from sources like Dun and Bradstreet.

The challenge for most companies is that they do not have the necessary resources to complete this research. Therefore providers of supplier data should be able to make this data available in templates that companies can begin with. Simple data should always be available in any database as to Company Name, Annual Sales, Product category expertise, contact information, e-procurement experience and product specifications. This data should be easily exportable to a variety of formats such as MSFT Excel.

A simple request of your e-procurement solutions provider should get you well on your way to completed RFI?s that lead to quality RFP?s and RFQ?s without spending a lot of your valuable time on basic research. If they do not, we?d be glad to hear from you.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments

So, how can we drive better returns and possibly avoid these results without wasting time by evaluating everything to death?

The fact is that retailers particularly the largest ones have been using enegotiation tools. The rest of us however and that includes some pretty large companies are not and if we are, we are not doing it across a broad enough range of categories. The adoption rate within retail is low for a number of reasons such as poor supplier participation and buyers and category managers that continue to resist change.

The 1st area of poor supplier participation can be solved by working with the right solution provider that can continually invite new sources of supply to your reverse auctions and sustain that process for years through the size of their supplier database. The 2nd area can be addresses by CEO?, CFO?S and CPO?s telling their organizations that this is the way we are going to be doing things. Yes it does require senior level executive involvement to drive this.

To begin with senior executives should review their overall sourcing strategy and ask why their company is not using hosted eneogtioan tools for RFI?s, RFP?s and RFQ?s. If you are, you should ask what percent of total spend is going through these tools. Any thing under 30% is unacceptable. So the directive is to grow usage.

You should ask if the tools you are using are offered in the form of software-as-a-service or SaaS. If not, your tools are probably not the most current. This model allows you to find a new provider and it literally takes all of about one day to launch…

One reason that local suppliers don?t care to provide pricing to you ( and there is a good chance they may not have even been asked to) in a historical purchasing formula is because you might not even know they exist or because they do not believe you will do business with them because of your incumbent relationships.

Reverse auctions and other enegotiation tools are a completely non confrontational way of doing business which allows all suppliers to put their best price and services on the table at minimal cost to them. A job that can take category managers and buyers weeks and sometimes months to do when looking for new sources of supply can be accomplished in days. Multi product auctions or multi line item auctions are much easier for buyers to sort through in order to come up with an optimum bid that than when using traditional methodologies.

It?s a shame when a company has to declare bankruptcy. Consumers suffer, employees suffer, suppliers suffer, and in fact all stake holders suffer. There are tools and company?s out there to help you possibly avoid this result.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

It?s a shame when a company has to declare bankruptcy. Consumers suffer, employees suffer, suppliers suffer, and in fact all stake holders suffer.

Now, let?s look at our alternative e-procurement scenario. As a retailer we already know that the house is on fire, so we have to do what ever it takes to put the fire out quickly. I assume we all agree here. Remember we are already planning for bankruptcy. This is no time for ?we have our supplier relationships to worry about? or similar objections. What relationships are more important to us in the first place, our consumer, associates, the community or our suppliers? In this model, best price and best quality for product and services wins.

Let?s look at the finances behind this new scenario. Let?s assume that average savings across all categories in retail is nearly 20% when using reverse auctions properly. This would include the proper use of RFI?s and RFP?s. Let?s assume the same retailer from our bankruptcy example were to assign 30% of their total cost of goods and services to this process. That would be $600M in spend if we assume 70% COGS. Let?s assume we achieve targeted savings of 20% after switching and other related costs are applied. Total savings in this scenario would equal $120M or $10M per month. This would we the same as the store closing model without loss of sales or associate lay offs.

This author is not naive enough to believe that some of both scenarios will not have to be deployed. Sometimes we have to close stores; sometimes we have to lay off associates. With that said if we are not using these types of advanced tools as the standard way we procure all products we are not putting our best foot forward. This does not mean that we have not used these tools on selected items or categories like plastic bags or technology or that our wholesalers and collective buyers don?t use these tools to source goods they sell to us. The fact is that we have and they are. In the first case we are not doing it across a broad enough range of categories, in the second scenario the savings they earn are not all being passed on to us.

We certainly look forward to your comments and would be glad to engage in a discussion on this subject.

It?s a shame when a company has to declare bankruptcy. Consumers suffer, employees suffer, suppliers suffer, and in fact all stake holders suffer.

In this authors many years working in the retail industry, companies seeking protection through bankruptcy as a way to reorganize has never gone away and probably never will and certainly is very common during challenging economic times..

Too many times however actions that could or should have been taken never get implemented or seriously considered in the name of relationship management, supply chain cooperation and maintaining the status quo.

The retail industry has never totally embraced the use of reverse auctions as standard approaches to procurement as measured by percent of spend under the management of these tools. For those companies that have, bankruptcy is probably not something they have to look forward to in their future.

Let?s look at a simple example of the bankruptcy approach. Company A has annual sales of nearly $2B from their 150 locations. The same chain has bottom line profit of $20M or 1% of sales. The company as a result of reduced sales which means reduced cash flow and resulting slow payment, get?s itself into trouble and decides to declare bankruptcy to deal with their problems. The immediate plan is to close 10 stores. Typically these stores employ 100 to 150 full and part time associates. So we are talking about losing 1000 to 1500 jobs. If we make the assumption that all things are equal (which they never are) single store sales in this model would equal about $13.3M annually or $255K per week. Losing these sales would impact the company?s net profitability by about $133K in profit per store or $1.33M for the ten store group. Cost of goods for this group of stores would be about 70% or $93.M. I think you?re beginning to get my drift, although rent and certain liability expense won?t go away, let?s assume when backing in to this that 99% of the chains cost for these stores goes away since net profit is 1%. The company from a simple cash flow perspective saves or $131M which minus restructuring charges would save about $11M per month.

Please visit with us again for tomorrows post to consider an e-procurement alternative to the above bankruptcy financial model.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

What is SQF and how do should retail food companies implement it?

According to Dictionary.com a panacea is a remedy for all disease or ills; a cure-all or an answer or solution for all problems or difficulties. Although this author does not believe it to be a panacea, SQF is certainly an important building block if not a corner stone of any global food safety program.

The SQF (Safe Quality Food) Program is a leading, global food safety and quality certification program and management system designed to meet the needs of buyers and suppliers worldwide. There are two sections of SQF. SQF 1000 is targeted at primary producers and SQF 2000 is targeted at manufacturers and distributors. More detailed inforamtion can be found at www.sqf.com. Schools are held regularly around the country for both groups and detailed information about these schools can also be found at www.fmi.org under the calendar section.

There are ten basic steps to implementing an SQF Program. These steps are taken from the SQF manual.

1. The Buyer requests the desired level of certification to be achieved by the supplier.
2. The Supplier designates a staff member as its SQF Practitioner to lead development of its SQF System, or hires an external SQF Consultant licensed by The SQF Institute.
3. The SQF Practitioner is trained at a licensed SQF Training Center.
4. The SQF Practitioner conducts a gap analysis of the supplier?s current system.
5. The Supplier selects an SQF licensed Certification Body to perform a certification audit.
6. A Certification Audit is conducted consisting of a document review and on-site audit.
7. An Auditor recommends certification if no critical or major non-conformities are found and the audit result indicates an acceptable rating.
8. The Certification Body Review Council makes the final decision and the SQF Certificate and audit report are issued. The SQF Certificate is valid for 12 months.
9. If critical or major non-conformities are found, the supplier takes corrective action, which is verified before certification is granted.
10. Re-certification audits are conducted annually and within 30 days of the scheduled audit date. audit frequency can be either annual, semi annual or more frequent depending on the type of certificate issued and the risk level.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments.

This years Green for Retail or G4R conference held by Chain Store Age Magazine and sponsored by dozens of suppliers offered some great insight as to savings opportunities that retail companies attribute directly to their green initiatives.

One area that was of great interest to this author was that of water conservation. Safesourcing is always looking for opportunities to create interest as to where our retail partners can hold reverse auctions that can have a positive impact on the environment and also save them money. So, let?s hold a toilet auction.

Ok, I know ha, ha, ha. In this case I am totally serious.

At this yearsG4R conference Elaine Aye, principal of Green Building Services from Seattle
told attendees that water conservation represents an opportunity for big savings. Aye recommended the use of low flow plumbing fixtures which for toilets use a minimum of 1.6 gallons per flush, even better would be the use of dual-flush technology where you can get .8 or 1.2 gallons per flush?. Aye also explained that retailers can also reduce their water use by installing low-flow aerators (.5gallons per minute) on faucets.

This begs some basic sourcing questions.

1. Do all stores today use this technology
2. For planned remodels, will all new construction include this technology?
3. How many times per day are the toilets in your public restrooms flushed?
4. How many gallons of water would the new technology save?
5. How much would your total water bill be reduced?
6. If you installed this technology chain wide how many gallons of water would you save?
7. How many suppliers can you find for an auction of this type?
8. What are the other initiatives these suppliers have in place that support your CSR initiatives?

If you think this is a silly idea, let?s hear your out of the box thinking by offer an guest post of a better idea. Here are the benefits to this idea.

1. Reduced water usage.
2. Lower construction costs.
3. Lower utility bills
4. New sources of supply that are environmentally focused.
5. Supports corporate social responsibility.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

The CDC has launched a website that will track the Environmental causes of chronic diseases. SafeSourcing applauds this as another great step in support of long term impact areas that can benefit from companies CSR initiatives.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or “CDC”; Measuring amounts of hazardous substances in our environment in a standard way, tracing the spread of these over time and area, seeing how they show up in human tissues, and understanding how they may cause illness is critical. The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network is the start of that system.

What this author likes about this site is that information can be tracked over time for both state and local areas which will become richer over time. SafeSourcing will be adding links and rss feeds to this website that will display in the alerts section of our website www.safesourcing.com because we believe that information of this type can be a great measurement tool over the long term in support of the positive effects that better procurement practices can have relative to both product and environmental safety.

You can visit http://ephtraqcking.cdc.gov to learn more.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

The CDC has launched a website that will track the Environmental causes of chronic diseases. SafeSourcing applauds this as another great step in support of long term impact areas that can benefit from companies CSR initiatives.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or ?CDC?; Measuring amounts of hazardous substances in our environment in a standard way, tracing the spread of these over time and area, seeing how they show up in human tissues, and understanding how they may cause illness is critical. The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network is the start of that system.

What this author likes about this site is that information can be tracked over time for both state and local areas which will become richer over time. SafeSourcing will be adding links and rss feeds to this website that will display in the alerts section of our website www.safesourcing.com because we believe that information of this type can be a great measurement tool over the long term in support of the positive effects that better procurement practices can have relative to both product and environmental safety.

You can visit http://ephtraqcking.cdc.gov to learn more.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

It?s easy to criticize and organization when they do not get things right. It should be just as easy to applaud their efforts when they do the right thing. In this case the FDA gets it right.

The FDA is one of more than 25 permanent rss feeds at SafeSourcing alerts located in the upper right hand corner of our website www.safesourcing.com. These feeds regularly update site visitors as to safety and environmental violations, concerns, recalls and other important information in the retail industry as the happen.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today announced a regulation expected to prevent each year approximately 79,000 cases of food borne illness and 30 deaths caused by consumption of eggs contaminated with the bacterium Salmonella Enteritidis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC, A person infected with the Salmonella enteritidis bacterium usually has fever, abdominal cramps, and diarrhea beginning 12 to 72 hours after consuming a contaminated food or beverage.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

The role of procurement is pretty clear. At least it is to retail procurement professionals. This author believes it is the most important job in retail.

Others may argue with the last sentence, so let’s be more specific as to the other departments that are vital, yet no where near as important or in the position to lead as procurement. Not store operations, not finance, not information technology, not loss prevention, not human resources. They all use the products and services you negotiate the terms, conditions and pricing for. The impact these organizations can have on the net profitability of a company pale by comparison to what can be accomplished by procurement professionals armed with the most current e-procurement tools. Every good and service for resale and not for resale that comes in to a retail establishment has to go through the procurement process. That means it goes through buyers, category managers and other spend authorized team members. So, with the role of being the most important department, it is also incumbent upon procurement thought leaders to seize the opportunity to lead by example. One area that deserves your attention is driving and supporting green initiatives and corporate sustainability initiatives beyond simply making sure the products you procure support eco friendly standards.

So where might procurement thought leaders aid their companies approach to sustainability efforts. The following are ten simple suggestions to stimulate your thinking. How many more can your team come up with?

1. Provide your team with the necessary tools to work from home and let them do so at least one day per week.
2. Ask your vendors to not come to the office weekly anymore. Have them communicate via the internet.
3. Host more e-negotiation events such as RFI’s as a standard way of procuring green certified products.
4. Use recycled office supplies such as soy based toners.
5. Make all corporate non shipping fleet vehicles hybrids.
6. Reduce the use of paper contracts.
7. Make sure all contractors for remodels and new construction are LEEDS certified
8. Use eco friendly compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL’s) lighting at home and in the office.
9. Car pool.
10. Have a team whiteboard session on ways to use clean technologies such as wind, bio-fuel, solar etc.

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.