Strategic sourcing achieves better results than tactical sourcing every time.
Today’s post is by Dave Wenig, Vice President of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing, Inc.
Most will agree that reducing and controlling costs within an organization is important. Certainly, all of SafeSourcing’s customers leverage our services to generate savings and they all do that fairly well. However, just like in many things, the results will vary.
Success in cost control is a spectrum. On the one side, results are good, but may be limited. On the opposite end, the results are spectacular and widespread. As would be expected, SafeSourcing has customers across the entire spectrum. We’re always coaching and pushing our customers to move toward the spectacular savings end of the spectrum.
So, if we identify the spectrum as ranging from “good” to “spectacular,” then what is it that determined where on that scale a customer will fit? One answer is how their organization has approached sourcing with eProcurement. Customers that find good results, meaning they will source some spend and find some savings are typically utilizing eProcurement as a tactical tool. They select an individual category and focus on that alone to find savings. Any use of eProcurement is better than none and their results will be good for that category. This customer will then start to consider what they would like to source next. Again, this approach will deliver good results. We’re always going to try to push this type of customer to do even better and achieve more.
Customers that get closer to spectacular results will invariably have a very strategic approach to sourcing and their approach to eProcurement. As a strategic sourcing company, SafeSourcing is very deeply engaged with these customers to help make sure their results are meeting their objectives. How strategically an organization manages their sourcing will directly correlate to how close to spectacular their results will be. SafeSourcing has a full set of procure to pay solutions and our customers who achieve spectacular results don’t just run RFPs and RFQs. These customers leverage our SafeSpendAnalysis™ to build a roadmap, they utilize our SafeSourceIt™ suite of eRFQx tools to negotiate pricing, they continue that control with our SafeContract™, SafeCatalog™, and SafePO™ tools and more. Customers on this end of the spectrum see results that truly have an impact on the bottom line. The level of cost control available to customers that take this strategic approach, or even part of it, will always be greater than what customers will get with a tactical approach.
Again, with a spectrum ranging from good to spectacular, the point is that participating in eProcurement either with a tactical approach or a strategic approach is better than not using eProcurement. The question an organization needs to consider is; do they want to have good results, or do they want spectacular results? We can’t answer that, but we’ll always try to push them to do more and better.
For more information, please contact SafeSourcing
