Archive for June, 2015

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Cutting Jobs to Cut Cost is NOT always the RIGHT Answer?..

Wednesday, June 10th, 2015

 

Todays post is from?the SafeSourcing Archive.

The first thing that seems to come to mind? for Many companies when faced with financial struggles is cutting jobs in order to save money. For this author, this is not always the best decision for the company even though it is almost always the largest expense on the P&L.

When a company cuts jobs, it not only puts stress on the people whom are losing their jobs, but it also puts stress on the company and employees that remain. These employees have to work harder to accomplish the same amount of work. The workload does not change when cutting jobs, so now an employee has to take on the workload of former co-workers who were laid off in order to get the job done. This can put additional stress on these employees and result in them not accomplishing their best work.

When a company is faced with financial struggles, a company like SafeSourcing could come in and potentially save some of these jobs.? I have personally seen SafeSourcing? save? companies? hundreds, thousands, and even millions of dollars by? assisting them in the? purchase of? materials, supplies and services they need and use every day? in order to run their business. For example, copy paper, printer ink, POS paper, etc. SafeSourcing can help you source any product, good, service, you name it.

If you were to contact SafeSourcing in order to help you save money, you may not have to cut those jobs and could even potentially add jobs to the company. I?ve seen this first hand.

Contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative for more money-saving details.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

 

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Understanding Disaster Recovery!

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015

 

Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archive.

No one ever likes to acknowledge the fact that sometimes unforeseen bad things happen in life.  Disaster strikes and we are left to try and pick up the pieces and recover.  In the corporate world disaster can take many forms and the companies that move forward the quickest after disaster strikes are the ones who find the greatest success.

Today’s blog is going to touch on a few of these areas and what you might be thinking about as you plan your strategies for handling disaster.

IT Disaster Recovery  – In today’s world where data is “king” disaster of the IT variety can be devastating to a company.  Having continuous availability to your company’s system and data is critically important and protection can come in three types of control measures.  Preventative measures are those strategies that focus on preventing events (Natural or man-made) from occurring in the first place. Corrective measures focus on the plan of attack once a disaster has struck.  Designating departments, contacts and individuals as part of the process is extremely important.  Detective plans have a primary focus on the detection and discovery of a potential disaster.  Many software solution companies can help provide this protection.

Building Disaster Recovery – Another area that can be affected by a disaster or emergency are your physical buildings.  When faced with an emergency many companies have not fully thought out how they will respond.   There are so many consulting companies who help companies plan for emergencies every day most of them focus on a similar process.  Develop your response plan, deploy the plan throughout the organization with support coming from the “C” level.  This deployment involves training of your staff and regular reviews and maintenance of the plan as your infrastructure changes.

Disaster Recovery Transportation Services – While not every company depends heavily on their shipping lanes, those that do understand how critical the availability of those is to their business and nothing affects them like natural disasters.  Develop a network of secondary and contingent shipping lanes that can step and take over within a moment’s notice.  As is the case with many contingent services, you will pay a premium rate, however it pales in comparison of the potential lost revenue a disaster can create.

Disaster Recovery Supply Chain – Going hand-in-hand with your shipping lane emergency planning is planning for alternate emergency suppliers.  When the earthquake hit Japan in 2011 many companies had no idea the affects the disaster would have on their business.  Manufacturers in Japan were shut down and items like Magnetic Tapes and Electronics suddenly became unavailable and US companies were left scrambling to find alternative sources.   Determining contingent supply sources plays a huge role in ensuring mission critical items stay available.  Many times online bidding events can help define these secondary and tertiary sources of suppliers.

For more information about how SafeSourcing can assist with connecting you with companies who can help with emergency and disaster planning, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to your comments.

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The benefits of an eNewsletter!

Monday, June 8th, 2015

 

Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archive.

Communication with employees, business partners, customers and vendors is not a new concept and the growing popularity of electronic communication channels are familiar to most people that use the internet.  What has become a valuable tool and channel of communication are eNewsletters sent via email and companies that specialize in this service can expand the value you can get from them beyond just the lower cost to create them.

In today’s blog we will explore a few of those other qualities that can be leveraged with an eNewsletter program whether run internally or externally with a 3rd party vendor.

Data Validation – One of the most important features of any marketing project is to obtain and maintain quality contact information.  Unlike other forms of communication, email provides instant feedback on what data is valid and what is not.  A good eNewsletter company will provide the services not only to design and distribute your content but also to manage the quality of the contact information you are using in that distribution; updating it when necessary to keep it valuable.

Immediate Interaction – eNewsletters provide a clear path to interactivity between you and the users you are trying to connect with.  Embedded links, videos, surveys and feedback forms when managed by your eNewsletter team, offer a fresh and impactful way to establish loyalty and relationships with your customers, employees and vendors.

Direct Ties and Monitoring to Marketing Programs – 3rd party providers that can handle your eNewsletter needs will tell you that the greatest way to increase the effectiveness of what you send out is to tie it directly into your other Marketing programs.  They will help you tie discount and loyalty programs into the use and readership of your eNewsletter in ways that will make both pieces stronger.

User Specific content – Unlike the historic printed newsletter that had “one-size-fits-all” content, eNewsletters can be distributed with slightly different versions depending on whether they are going to your employees, employees of your partners, your current customers or potential customers.  Having a good marketing focused team to help with this content will allow the message to feel personal and will increase the ways each of these groups uses the content.

For more information on how we can help you find tools or partners to begin your company’s eNewsletter campaign, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative or download our most current eNewsLetter.

We look forward to your comments.

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Methods that a company may explore in order to get energy costs under control.

Friday, June 5th, 2015

 

Today’s post is by Ryan Melowic, Sr. Director at  SafeSourcing.

For companies with numerous locations, the need to reduce utility costs and improve facility efficiency is very important in order to remain competitive.  Reviewing utility bills and purchase negotiations are labor intensive and often outside the scope of most accounts payable departments.  Therefore, there are other methods your company can explore.

One method to get your company’s energy cost under control is to identify potential companies that can provide complete management of Utility Bill Processing and Analysis tasks so their clients are able to focus on proactively driving cost savings and facility efficiencies. Utility Bill Processing and Analysis provides a fully outsourced payment solution with detailed data capture, robust reporting and best in class analysis capabilities. These companies consolidate thousands of invoices into one simple invoice for their clients to process and then can provide an automated feed of data to your company’s accounting software. Clients can therefore better track how each location manages energy costs and consumption.

Another method for reducing energy costs is to identify potential companies that can manage setting up or closing out utility services.  Energy Supply Management companies can insure that your company is starting out with the right rate schedule for the size of your business as well as negotiating to waive or lower opening deposits.  These companies will also work to ensure all deposits or refunds are credited appropriately.    In addition, ensure the locations that are closed are no longer being billed.

Additionally finding companies that will combine and tender your company’s energy requirements to a preselected group of large-scale energy providers for multiple-year increments will help reduce your company’s energy costs. They will then choose the most beneficial energy provider based on specific value-added criteria including;

•   Lowest price
•   Rate of margin attracted by the wholesaler on a per kWh and per GJ basis for any new Energy client that may come on board after the aggregated purchases
•   Reliability and accuracy
•   Detailed billing and consumption data feeds

Weather you explore one method or all of the methods, SafeSourcing can create for your company a RFP that will compare service and pricing structures.  We will than normalize the data and compress the pricing of the potential vendors.

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.

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Drafting the perfect Procurement Supplier Team….

Thursday, June 4th, 2015

 

Today’s post is our SafeSourcing archive

Over the next two weekends, scores of NFL fans will be coming together to reenact the most important moment of their sports lives for the year….the fantasy football draft.  This is the time where seasons are made or broken based on the selection of real football players in a make believe environment.

If you are one of these people, you are now instantly connected to this blog and if not, you now probably think both I and fantasy football are stupid but read on as I put it in the perspective of the procurement world.   Both worlds may make a little more sense when we’re done.

Beware of the rookies – One of the biggest risks someone can take in putting together a lineup of real NFL players to compete for fake fantasy points based on their individual performances is to draft a first year player. They are unproven and usually come with nothing but potential and risk. In much the same way, unproven, unknown vendors who try to buy your business constitute a similar risk.   These vendors promise the world of potential and often come at bargain prices only to disappoint and fail on delivering their potential.  Therein lies the risk because in some cases (read that C.J. Spiller, Arian Foster) the rookie not only pans out but delivers at levels few veterans can.  Research the company, research the solution, research their history and then know the risk you are taking.

The changing team – Every fantasy football owner I know would love to put out Requests For Information to each NFL team every summer.  If they did this is what they would ask: “Are there any major changes in management expected in the next 6 months?”;  “Do you plan on having a major shift in offensive mission statement before the season starts?”;  “Are you looking to acquire new talent that would affect how you do business in the next 3 months?”  The reason these types of questions would be important is because they affect the value of the services they are looking for from a player in much the same way companies like to include these types of questions when determining the value of a solution they are interested in.  By itself the solution may be a leader but unfortunately changes to that vendor’s infrastructure can render a terrific component useless.

The handcuff – Fantasy Football owners, please skip down in this block while I explain the concept of the handcuff.  The handcuff is a player who is the backup of a major starting player on a football team (usually a running back) that people draft when they already have the starter on the team and they want insurance of also having the backup in case anything happens to the starter or the starter does not perform according to expected levels.  When you have both, you have security in the same way procurement professionals like to have the security of a primary and secondary supplier for mission critical categories.  Having a backup to take over for your primary player/supplier gives you the flexibility and security to focus on other areas that need more attention.

At SafeSourcing we pride ourselves on trying to view procurement projects from different angles as well as the traditional and successful approaches and hope you enjoyed today’s “out-of-the-box” comparison to a very popular activity.  We hope to get a chance to show some of this creativeness for your companies.  For more information about SafeSourcing 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.

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If it ain’t broke……

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015

 

Today’s post is our SafeSourcing archive.

While eProcurement technologies aren’t new, it is surprising how new of a concept they can be to some very large companies.  As with any new technology and process, the perception of the change that must come as a result can be a bit skewed.  Good solutions will dictate how much change is necessary by evaluating how well things are working today.

In today’s blog, we will be looking a few situations and where new eProcurement strategies can fit to leverage what you are currently doing today.

Improving what works – Companies don’t get big by having broken processes in every aspect of their business, so it stands to reason that there will be many good ways of procuring goods and services that they are using today.  If, for example, there is a process in place for purchasing equipment for every regional office that works, what may be needed is a process that helps bring in some additional vendors, products and services to evaluate and then to provide the means by which the best value can be achieved for an award.  As indicated below, there will be processes that need more help, so for the ones that don’t, focus on broadening the selection pool and getting the best value so that decision can be realized as soon as possible.

Managing what works – There are always spend categories where things are generally working, just in 100 different ways across all offices.  When you have 50 different locations all using different vendors, tools and processes a good first move can be to let the locations continue business as usual but bring in a vendor to help manage what all 50 locations are doing, monitoring the activity and controlling the expenses and savings.  A good eProcurememt solution will assist with getting the vendor pool to select from to handle the management realizing value immediately by assuring things run smootghly.

Consolidating what works – Sometimes organizations need more than someone to manage what they are currently doing; they need consolidation of those vendors in a way that leaves their processes in tact but begins to leverage the value that comes with more volume and smaller numbers of vendors to have to manage relationships with.  The important thing in projects like these is to understand the current landscape so that in consolidating what works, “what works” doesn’t get lost in the process.  This can be achieved with internal polls of the locations and external polls to the current vendors supporting the business today.  Once this information is captured the plan for consolidation becomes much clearer.

For more information about how we can assist with sourcing your needs without changing what works for your company, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to your comments.

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