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

SafeSourcing Inc., founded in 2008, is a Strategic Sourcing Company offering a complete Procure-to-Pay suite of applications and services under the SafeSourceIt™ banner that focus on reducing costs, improving efficiency and extending the reach of companies’ current finance and procurement organizations.

The heart of our family of products and services offerings is our SafeSourceIt™ eProcurement platform which includes SafeSurvey™, SafeDocument™, SafeContract™, SafeCatalog™, SafePO™, SafeScoreCards™, SafeDashboard™ and includes our popular reverse auction technology. Our leading SafeSourcing services deliverables include a  SafeSpendAnalysis™ and a Process Optimization Initiative. Our historic ROI is much greater than 10X and in many cases companies receive an ROI on their subsequent roll-out during the pilot stage of our engagement.

SafeSourcing’s horizontal products and services offerings deployed in the form of Software as a Service or (SaaS) are Cloud based and are deployed across many industries including Retail, Petroleum, Distribution, Healthcare, Consulting, Non-Profits and Financial Services. There are no spend areas within the Expense, Cost of Goods or Capital areas that have not been addressed with our products and services.

In summary, SafeSourcing helps businesses control spend, maximize savings and optimize purchasing, resulting in improved profits, earnings and shareholder equity in your next reporting period.

With offices in Scottsdale AZ and Kettering OH, SafeSourcing is one of the most well established companies in the Strategic Sourcing space.

For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

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

What does Bill and Hold mean?

As part of our SafeSourcing educational offerings discussed last week in a post title What Educational offerings does your eProcurement provider offer, I failed to discuss our SafeSourcing Wiki. Our Wiki is focused on procurement so almost any term you may need knowledge of in your day to day working life might be found there. Understanding the terms in your sourcing documents, specifications, term and conditions and contracts can have a profound effect on the results of audits and other reviews required by governments, suppliers, and management.

According to our SafeSourcing Wiki, bill and hold is a sale arrangement made by the seller and the customer prior to the delivery and is held by the seller. In the bill and hold process, a seller of the goods bills the customer for the products but does not ship until the customer needs the product. In or[1]der for a transfer of ownership to occur, certain pro[1]visions must be met. These provisions would include payment for the goods, the goods be segregated from all other similar goods by the seller, and the goods be finished and ready for use.

SafeSourcing also endeavors to do something less tangible but more profound than just sourcing, the imparting of retail e- procurement and supply chain knowledge, positive judgment and well-developed retail wisdom that supports a safer and more eco-friendly global supply chain while driving increased efficiency and improved profitability for our customers and their stakeholders. For more information, please https://www.safesourcing.com/Contact-Us

Today’s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Director of HR, and Administration at SafeSourcing Inc.

With the ever increasing and frustrating situation with supply chain interruptions, many of us are wondering what can be done?

Most likely you have seen some shortage of good or supply lately. If not, you may have at least noticed prices going higher and higher. Prices go higher as demand gets higher, and demand gets higher as availability goes does. But as we are seeing now, sometimes there simply just is not any of what we are looking for. This is when having a strategic sourcing partner, like SafeSourcing, can help.

SafeSourcing can help your organization find alternatives to what you are looking for or even come up with plans to obtain the supplies or services you need. For example, collaborating with other organizations can provide a greater buying opportunity for you since it will increase, often dramatically, the volume of the item to be bought. This in turn provides a selling opportunity for a manufacturer or distributor that may have otherwise not been able.

Finding alternatives is another fantastic way to source the goods or services you need. For example, if you need honey, you may not be able to get imported honey you have in the past, but you may be able to source it locally. This adds another benefit of keeping business and revenues local and supporting the investment of a community.

Another option is to find items that are comparable. While this is trickier than the other methods, it can still greatly benefit an organization. For example, if 12-ounce plastic bottles are proving difficult to source, you may weigh the costs and benefits of looking at either a ten ounce or 16-ounce bottle. Sometimes the price difference covers the additional cost of product in those bottles.

For more information on what the SafeSourcing team can offer you, or on our Risk-Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

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

I’m betting not too many can answer this without looking it up! See, it did not even have to do with procurement, but does make it much easier for companies like SafeSourcing to grow without the need for a huge development staff. We are an open-source user and it save both SafeSourcing and our customers money.

The term open-sourcing is the act of releasing previously proprietary software under an open source/free software license.  Open sourcing also refers to any program which the source is made available for modification as developers use to fit their needs.  Another term related to open-sourcing is Open Source. Open Source is a certification owned by the Open-Source Initiative (OSI).  The purpose of the OSI is giving the developers of the software the ability to redistribute with the OSI trademark. Before the developers could redistribute with the OSI trademark, they must meet the requirements of the OSI.

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 help companies find open-source companies for their own use. To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

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

While everyone is still talking about inflation and what, if anything, needs to be done to fight it, the conversation will always go to costs. Do you feel like you’re forever fighting back against cost increases and never making any headway? The job can feel awfully Sisyphean.

That said, many in procurement and many of the larger providers and content creators in the space aren’t talking so much about cost control. Much of what we hear falls more into other areas of procurement like strategic sourcing, forecasting and planning, inventory management, and other topics.

Why then, if the whole world is talking about costs, are we spending so little time on cost control?

Cost control involves managing procurement costs throughout the process to minimize waste, reduce expenses, and prevent cost overruns. This includes identifying cost-saving opportunities, optimizing the use of resources, and monitoring costs in real-time.

My theory is that achieving cost control is hard, especially over the past couple of years. The hard things often take a backseat to the things that are easier to do. If you’re the one who’s job it is to truly control costs, you may feel like Sisyphus and you might imagine yourself a little like the poor person in the image above.

Attaining your cost control goals as part of your larger procurement objectives is not impossible, even if it may be hard and does seem like a stretch. All good goals require stretching and hard work.

SafeSourcing has been delivering for our customers against cost control goals. We know how to do it, including recently and have plenty of great examples, resources, and techniques to share to help you do it For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.