Archive for the ‘Business Sourcing’ Category

Did you know APPLE changed the charging port again?

Friday, September 22nd, 2023

 

It’s been a few years since they did it, but they did it again.

The new iPhone 15 will have a new charging port, ditching the Lightning port that it came out with a few years ago.  When I first heard this I was thinking here we go again, time to throw out all of my recently purchased cables and buy something else from Apple at an expensive price.  The good news is that they finally did something right and the new charging port is USB-C which is the standard for other devices and not something that is proprietary to Apple.  This port is widely used in other smartphones, computers, gaming systems, tablets, cameras, and headphones.  So, you may already have some of these cables lying around your home or office.  Just think if you misplace your cable now you can just grab a cord from your laptop or one of gaming systems and not have to hassle with looking for the correct cable.  The change made by Apple was partly caused by a European Union mandate that requires all mobile devices to switch over to USB-C by late 2024.  The reason this standardization was put in place is so that people do not need to continue to purchase different cables for all of their devices.  It’s a little too early to tell but who knows Apple may end up getting rid of the USB-C port in the future and go to wireless charging.  They already removed the headphone port when they released the iPhone 7 to make it even slimmer than previous versions.  If you are thinking of upgrading to the new iPhone 15 here are a few other new features to research.

  • New Titanium Design
  • 48 Megapixel Camera
  • 120Hz Display
  • New Active Button
  • More Repairable Design
  • Improved Imaging Software
  • Brighter Display

If you are looking to purchase new smartphones or devices for your company and would like help researching available options, feel free to contact SafeSourcing.   We can gather all the necessary information for you and help you decide which one meets your needs.  If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help you, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today

Category Development Index (CDI)

Monday, September 11th, 2023

 

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

How do you follow the trend in the categories that you source? If you only source them once a year or less frequently, does it make sense to talk to a partner that sources them globally dozens of times a year like SafeSourcing?

A Category Development Index, or CDI, is a trend analysis that indicates the turnover of sales of a given productcategory in a specific area. The CDI can give vital data for marketers to allocate advertising to specific areas maximizing product category knowledge and profit. The category Development Index is often used in conjunction with the Brand Development Index or BDI.

SafeSourcing is an eprocurement company that operates across multiple industries. As such we have specific experience in almost any commodity, service or capital related spend. Our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database provides access to suppliers across multiple categories in order to support single or multiple source opportunities both near shore and offshore. To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

 

 

Happy Labor Day Weekend 2023

Friday, September 1st, 2023

 

Todays post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

Do you know how many products are affected by the price of corn?

Here are an easy bakers dozen of the more than hundreds for you to ponder. How do they affect your purchasing? Many of you probably have no idea! The good news is that SafeSourcing can help.

1. Alternative medicine
2. Chemicals
3. Bio-fuel
4. Food
5. Feed
6. Sweeteners
7. Starch
8. Beverage Alcohol
9. Plastics
10. Fabrics
11. Adhesives
12. Fish Bait
13. Herbal Supplements

If you’d like to understand how SafeSourcing takes into account this type of commodity information when sourcing your products, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services account manager.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Are you sourcing a new category or cannot find a specification for a current category?

Monday, August 21st, 2023

 

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc

Often when speaking with customers and prospects I am asked why SafeSourcing can reduce their current pricing as dramatically as we do.  My fist response to ask how often they source the category. The answers range from annually to every few years or longer. From there I ask them how they keep track of industry changes and evolution. This normally draws a blank look. My answer to them is that categories that they source even annually are evolving every day. Just think about waste removal the transition to a circular economy. What you might source for service today may not be the same as what is available six months from now, and at what cost SafeSourcing may source those categories dozens of times in a year and all of those changes are kept in our The SafeSourceIt™ Event Templates Library and are up to date to the present day. Often these templates are more complete than data the customers have on file.

Our SafeSourceIt™ Event Templates Library is available to customers of SafeSourcing Inc. This library is designed to shorten the process of procuring a variety of not for resale and for resale products by making SafeSourcing’ s best practices tools available to our customers to shorten the amount of work one must do to prepare for quality e-procurement events. For more information or a demonstration of this tool please contact marketing@safesourcing.com.

SafeSourcing is a Procure to Pay SaaS based provider of a number of e-Procurement solutions and associated white glove services that are part of our SaaS offered SafeSourceIt™ eSourcing suite. These include but are not limited to SafeContract™, SafePO™, SafeDocument™ and our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database that includes over 557,000 vendor/suppliers.

To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

 

Category Captain

Friday, August 18th, 2023

 

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

Does your company have a Category Captain (Subject Matter Expert) for all of your spend areas?

Within a category, a category captain is the manufacturer‘s representative responsible for analyzing the product movement, assortment, inventory management, promotion, buying, and profitability for a specific geographic area or an entire chain. They will be expected to have the closest and most regular contact with the retailer. In order to do the job effectively, the supplier may be granted access to a greater wealth of data-sharing.

At SafeSourcing we offer SaaS based eprocurement solutions, as part of our SafeSourceIt™ family of products. Each product is backed by white-glove services with battle tested statements of work.

If you lack specific product knowledge or only source  certain categories less than annually, and would like to understand current market drivers,, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

 

Logistics Category Managers and Buyers. There are savings available out there today.

Thursday, August 10th, 2023

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc

How is your transportation and logistics category performing during these challenging times? Hopefully not like the above image. This area of your business requires very careful planning and a very clean product and services specifications. SafeSourcing keeps this type of clean information on file for you in our SafeSourceIt™ products and services templates library.

Here are some logistics and transportation categories that we have sourced that have been achieving decent results during the last six months.

  1. Fleet Repair and Maintenance
  2. Trailer Dollies
  3. Tractor Rentals/Purchases
  4. Fuel Carriers
  5. Tractor Leases
  6. Class Eight Truck Tires
  7. Sprinters
  8. Temporary Labor Drivers
  9. Managed Fleet Services
  10. Pallet Programs
  11. Truck Wash Programs
  12. Freight Lines/Shipping Lanes
  13. Yard Tractors
  14. Fleet Titling and Registrations Services
  15. Truck Decaling
  16. Refrigerated Freight
  17. Truck Batteries
  18. Shipping Supplies
  19. 18-Wheeler or Semi-Truck Tires
  20. Roadside Service
  21. Transportation Lanes

SafeSourcing is a Procure to Pay SaaS based provider of a number of e-Procurement solutions and associated white glove services that are part of our SaaS offered SafeSourceIt™ eSourcing suite. These include but are not limited to SafeContract™, SafePO™, SafeDocument™ and our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database that includes over 557,000 vendor/suppliers. To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

A Category Management Primer!

Wednesday, August 9th, 2023

 

 

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

What is the structure of your buying organization?

Evolution to a category management structure began in the 1980’s. Many companies today have still not completely evolved to this structure. So, what are some of the elements of a category management structure and what do they do. Here are some definitions from the SafeSourcing Wiki which is free for anyone to use.

  1. CategoryManagement is a retailing concept in which the total range of products sold by a retailer is broken down into discrete groups of similar or related products; these groups are known as product Examples of grocery categories may be tinned fish, washing detergent, toothpastes, etc. Each category is then run like a “mini business” (Business Unit) in its own right, with its own set of turnover and/or profitability targets and strategies.
  2. categorymanager (CM) analyzes product brands and mixinventory levels, movement, shelf space allocation, promotions, buying, and profitability of a merchandise category. They manage the marketing for a range of related products in a way designed to increase sales of all of the products, as opposed to a brand manager who markets an entire brand of goods.
  3. Within a category, a category captain is the manufacturer‘s representative responsible for analyzing the productmovement, assortment, inventory management, promotion, buying, and profitability for a specific geographic area or an entire chain. They will be expected to have the closest and most regular contact with the retail In order to do the job effectively, the supplier may be granted access to a greater wealth of data-sharing.

If you would like to learn more about our daily posts or other SafeSourcing free tools like our SafeSourcing Wiki, please contact a SafeSourcing customers services associate.

 

 

The Crime of disconnected procurement organizations.

Tuesday, August 8th, 2023

 

 

Today’s post are the ramblings of a frustrated CEO, Ronald D. Southard, at SafeSourcing Inc

Do you know your company’s numbers? Is your plan the same as your company’s plan?

Often when I meet with procurement knowledge workers regardless of company structure, so buyers, category managers, purchasing department manager etc. and ask these two questions, the answer I get is often baffling. I have heard all manner of responses that center around the following. My numbers are based on my categories and do not really have anything to do with the companies’ total numbers which our department does not have a view of. So, I forget about asking questions about Gross Margin, and Net Earnings because this team lead is focused on his/her personal and or department numbers and their own pay plan.

I guess if I assume that every category manager is set up with their own P&L (they should be) and they all beat their plan that theoretically the companies cost of goods should go down and gross margins go up. However, that’s not happening corporately as projects never happen in a straight line. Award of Business and time to contract are often disconnected by months. As a result, all the best efforts of the procurement team may result in team bonuses even though company results do not improve as much as they should do timing that erodes the contract value in year over year results. Let us just stick with this example and not even get into expense management which does not impact gross margin. Capital Plans are another issue all together but equally requiring the focus of Procurement knowledge workers. More on that crime at another time.

At SafeSourcing we know how to mitigate these issues and assist in the alignment that is focused on reducing costs and improving earnings for all company stakeholders.

SafeSourcing is a Procure to Pay SaaS based provider of a number of e-Procurement solutions and associated with our best practices focused white glove services that are part of our SaaS offered SafeSourceIt™ eSourcing suite. These include but are not limited to SafeContract™, SafePO™, SafeDocument™ and our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database that includes over 557,000 vendor/suppliers. To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

 

 

 

Do You Support Second Tier Sourcing?

Monday, August 7th, 2023

 

 

Today’s post is by Ronald D. Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc

You should be asking smaller suppliers if the qualify as a Second Tier Sourcing Option.

Companies should let their customers know if they are a minority owned, partially owned, woman owned or veteran owned business. Many companies plans call for supporting these types of businesses so why not let them know. SafeSourcing is a veteran owned business.

Second Tier Sourcing is a procurement policy that is used by various Fortune 500 corporations. This is a practice of rewarding suppliers for attempting to achieve minority-owned business spending goals of their customer(s).

The program was created by the Chrysler Corporation in 1993 and now extends throughout the Fortune 500. In 2005, Toyota set a goal of 10% for their suppliers and holds an annual matchmaking event to help their suppliers achieve those goals.

SafeSourcing is an eprocurement company that operates across multiple industries. As such we have specific experience in almost any commodity, service or capital related spend including software and development costs. Our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database is an often-used to assist companies in finding vendors that are Second Tier, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

Stay Focused on Savings!

Friday, August 4th, 2023

 

 

Today’s post is from our archives at SafeSourcing Inc.

While many buyers are acquiescing to higher prices month over month, it might be easy to assume that there is no other way. I am sure you know the old saying about what happens when you assume…

The truth is there are purchasing organizations out there who are still responsible for and capable of reducing their cost. As others talk about inflation, supply chain issues, the pandemic, and whatever other excuse du jour is popular at the moment, some are ignoring the noise and delivering cost reductions.

So, what is the difference between these types of procurement professionals? How does one decide that the best path is to accept price increases and the other decides to push back and win? Further, how does the latter actually succeed?

Tools like SafeSourcing’s SafeSourceIt™ suite of eProcurement solutions certainly play a critical role, but that is not the real differentiator here.

The real difference is the person. In the face of challenges, some will continue to try, and some will not. It takes determination, grit, and confidence to succeed as a buyer in these market conditions. I am truly fortunate to have the privilege of collaborating with many people with these exact traits, both as customer partners and as teammates here at SafeSourcing.

Because of this, I also get to watch these people persevere and create cost reductions where others say it is not possible. That is a very exciting thing to be a part of.

You must decide for yourself how you will react to challenges and whether you will continue to fight or roll over and die. If you would like to keep fighting to meet and exceed your cost reduction goals, we are here with you.

For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.