"How are you filling your department’s needs for specialized category expertise?”
Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archives.
As the landscape of the corporate world continues to change to adapt to changes in the economy, procurement departments are being asked to expand their areas of support throughout the organization. This expansion will require that procurement staffs begin to look for specialized expertise to augment their current staff whether in the form of temporary, permanent or 3rd party help.
In today’s blog will be look at three areas of expertise that will be important to procurement staffs in the future.
IT – Historically, most companies have let their IT department’s research and negotiate their own hardware and software deals due to the level of expertise needed to understand the company requirements. This process is beginning to shift as companies are looking to compress the pricing they receive after the RFP process has been narrowed down and the short list of vendors has been selected. To do this requires staff or a 3rd party vendor who can help facilitate this process, speaking with the vendors at a technical level everyone understands.
Hired Services– Hired services are can be complex categories to understand within an organization and the larger the company the more complex the process to procure these services can be. Many teams are looking for support help from the administrative and Human Resources departments to understand the scope and SOWs the company needs as well as looking to 3rd party vendors such as Managed Service Providers to help them with this process.
Transportation/Logistics – Very few spends within a large organization are as complex and as mission critical as the freight lanes they use. Late product is unacceptable and can result in customers changing to the competition. While they critical to the business they can also be very complex as the fuel prices fluctuate and as regulations, especially of the international variety, seem to change constantly. Looking for new permanent or temporary staff that have a background in logistics can go a long way to helping your company put programs in place that are flexible enough to adjust with the market but protect you enough to budget the spend.
For assistance in filling some of these areas of expertise in your organization, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.
We look forward to your comments.
