Today’s post is by Alyson Usserman, Project Manager at SafeSourcing Inc.

Do you know what the part over the whole procurement approach is and how it can help your company?

The part over the whole approach comes from reversing the way procurement specialists analyze data. The “normal” way to analyze the spend in a category is to look at the total first.

“How much did the company spend in this category?”

Typically the answer can lie anywhere from a fraction of a penny to millions of dollars.  But what if we analyzed the data differently?  What if we looked at coffee instead of the entire spend?  This approach typically takes place when a Request for Quote(RFQ) becomes two instead of one.  But what does that really mean?

When a customer decides to split an RFQ into two separate pieces, it becomes the part over the whole. The RFQ still counts toward the million dollars in spend, but it is the part, not the whole.  By taking this approach to procurement you can have great results.  You can then leverage the same suppliers multiple ways instead of just once.  When you take this approach to procurement you have the potential to build stronger business relationships between the suppliers and with your customers.

For more information on how we can help you with your procurement needs or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is by Michael Figueroa, Project Manager at SafeSourcing

In 1995, a gentleman by the name of McArthur Wheeler decided to rob a bank. What makes his case more interesting than most bank robberies is that McArther knew that lemon juice contained properties used to manufacture “invisible ink”. Thus, McArther reasoned, lemon juice should render him invisible to surveillance cameras when applied liberally to his face. Unsurprisingly, law enforcement wasn’t fooled for long and McArther’s bank robbing career came to an early end. However, we have this man to thank for inspiring an interesting study by Justin Kruger and David Dunning regarding a form of cognitive bias.

Kruger and Dunning theorized that unskilled (or uneducated) individuals suffer what is called Illusory Superiority, which is where an individual mistakenly assesses their own abilities or intelligence as much higher than is accurate. Interestingly enough, they showed this and the converse to be true: That the higher skilled/well educated tend to underestimate their abilities by assuming that the tasks that are easy for them are also easy for others, and they are therefore no more skilled than anybody else.

In Dunning’s own words: “If you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent. […] the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is.”

How do you overcome unknown unknowns? According to Dunning and Kruger, it’s overcome through both formal and informal training.

We can only know what we learn about.  Knowledge, even “common sense”, can only be known when learned. This is not the same as intelligence, or our ability to understand. Most people have the raw processing power within their brains to understand whatever you need them to, some just need more information to apply to the problems we need them to solve. This is why Kruger and Dunning emphasized the importance of training for overcoming Illusory Superiority.

Training unlocks the hidden abilities of others, and allows us to maximize the potential of others… McArther’s story is sad, if for no other reason than that just a little bit better education could have kept him from ruining his life. Training can be complex, or as simple as correcting difficult behavior, but it’s always a worthwhile investment.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist your team with this process or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.
 
We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is written by Heather Powell, Director of the Customer Focus Team at SafeSourcing, Inc.

Whether it is your personal vehicle, company car, or fleet semi-truck and trailer, you should have a plan for an emergency. There are many types of roadside assistance companies in the world. Finding one is easy; finding out if they can service your needs is easy; finding out what the hidden fees and charges are can be hard! Research and knowing the right questions to ask are the two most important pieces of information to have when shopping for companies such as this or any service oriented company.

Some questions to ask:  

  •  Is there a fee to call into customer service? 

  •  Is there a secondary fee if another vendor is needed? (You were broken down and thought you needed a jump start, but now you need to be towed)  

  •  Are there mileage limitations? What is the fee if service is beyond the set limit?   

  •  Is there an extra charge or fees for bringing fluids to the breakdown? (Coolant, gas, oil, transmission fluid)

Additionally, while shopping for roadside assistance, you may want to find out if you may already have a roadside assistance program. Check with your vehicle insurance company, cell phone company, car rental company, even the place where you bought your tires may offer a roadside assistance program. Some of these programs are add-on services and may have a minimal membership fee, others may be offered for free.

We at SafeSourcing can provide you with quality vetted suppliers, with the ability to fulfill all your specific needs for yourself or your fleet. Even more, we can assist in certification and insurance capabilities, clarification of fees, and identification services from each of the suppliers.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist you in emergency commercial roadside assistance for your business or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today. 

We look forward to your comments.

Today’s post is by your SafeSourcing Team.

It’s an old saying you’ve probably heard a million times, “You don’t know unless you ask.”   Usually another saying goes right with it, “What’s the worst thing they can do, say ‘No’?”  There are so many situations this can apply to and our space in procurement is no different.  As departments work harder and harder to control their prices with suppliers, eventually a point comes when the costs are as low as they can go before the suppliers make no money.  That is when it is time for companies and their suppliers to get creative.

Today, we will look at a few areas you can use to work with your suppliers to generate additional value that is outside of the cost of the goods and services they are contracted to provide today.

Cash Incentives – Like most good companies, driving more sales is a key to being successful.  The more business a company is willing to give a supplier, the happier they are.   To that end, many suppliers are willing to offer cash incentives for activity, such as an increase in length of contract, volume of spend, better payment terms, etc. The problem for their customers is that those programs are not always common knowledge, and many times are only given when the customer asks for it.  Requesting details on incentive programs in RFP/RFQ projects will give insight into what suppliers are willing to offer when they get an opportunity for more business.

Blocks of billable hours – Contracts are tedious, long, complex documents that many people outside of lawyers have never fully understood, much less read all the way through.  Included in most contracts, somewhere in an appendix, is a list of billable hours should something occur outside of the scope of the work that has been contracted.  These not only protect the supplier from having to do hundreds hours of work for free, but also are hours that can and do happen, otherwise they would not be in the contract.  One of the biggest charges is for custom reporting and development, which can range from $150 to $300 an hour.  This is an area that can also be improved upon and many companies are willing to compromise on when a customer requests 100 hours of free custom work as part of the deal.  At $300 an hour, that is an additional $30,000 in value to the company.

Additional Services – Much like asking for blocks of billable time, many times customers don’t try to negotiate other billable services, such as installation and configuration.  These services generally show up on the proposal as a line item with costs attached to it, but many times these are areas that vendors are more willing to negotiate.  Knowing the category, and getting advice on which pieces are the most likely to budge, is an important part of getting these fees.  It can come from an internal team or from outside consultants.  Once again these are services with costs that should be realized as additional savings.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can assist with ideas for other areas to create increased value on your projects or on our “Risk Free” trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire customer services team waiting to assist you today.

We look forward to your comments.