Archive for the ‘Retail Supply Chain’ Category

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What’s the genesis of your supplier database and how was it built?

Tuesday, March 24th, 2020

 

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

All databases have their start as an information gathering exercise that ultimately is enhanced by those characteristics the owner or developer determines to be useful to the community of interest the database is to be offered to. The information then becomes part of a data model where information sets can be accessed or searched based on a variety of queries or questions. Most developers follow a process called Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration or UDDI  as this process.

Universal Description, Discovery and Integration or (UDDI) is a standard established for building online databases of companies and the goods and services they provide, similar to Yellow Pages for the Internet. UDDI is intended to help businesses locate suppliers and products. Sourcing companies supplier databases go well beyond this definition.

Data models can be extremely complex and that is where they become more than a simple on line yellow pages. In fact high quality supplier databases should be able to provide much of the data you might find in the opening pages of a detailed RFI. A simple query like show me all companies within a 500 mile radius of your home office zip code that provide a set of products that meet the following safety certifications.  A next step might be summarizing all company information for these companies by a list of attributes such as company description, sale, years in business, officers etc.

How easy would that make your life?

If you’d like to find more qualified and vetted suppliers to support your sourcing efforts of any product or service, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Services Account Manager

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Part I of II. Are reverse auctions a good tool to use in the retail distribution cost plus arena?

Monday, April 15th, 2019

 

Todays post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing

A lot of distributors have told this author that reverse auctions don’t apply to them because they use the cost plus model and as such they just add their price or profit margin on top of the contract price with their source to drive their distributed price.

The fallacy in this thinking is that it may make buyers and category managers lazy in their approach to driving margin within the categories that they manage. This results in a higher price to the retailers they distribute to and ultimately to the consumer or their customers customer. A worst case scenario is that the consumer stops shopping at their customer’s store which reduces overall volume and further increases prices by not meeting volume incentives. It’s a slipper slope.

Off course this argument is relatively easy to overcome when we get around to discussing capital goods and expense related products and services area. These areas have an impact on the distributor’s net profit. And I’m sure that many of you will agree that just because one says they are a cost plus provider does not necessarily mean it’s true in the most pure sense of the definition.

Check back tomorrow and we’ll review what the real definition of cost plus is in part II.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Do you have the Right Signage at your Checkout Lane?

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016

 

Today’s post is by Gayl Southard, Administrative Consultant for SafeSourcing.

Many grocery stores are relaxing check-out line limits by adding the word “about” to the check-out line sign. Kroger and Food Lion are two chains that have rolled out signs that now read “about 15 items” in order to bring some peace to the lanes that are intended to be the fastest lines.  There is some logic to this as well.  Supermarkets aim to increase how much customers buy during a shopping visit.  Before a shopper may have been careful to have 15 items or less before they decided to get in the express line.  According to the Food Marketing Institute of Arlington, Virginia, the average sale in a customer transaction is $29.90.  If a customer is limiting the items purchased in the express line to 15 items or less, it means that purchasing that 16th or 17th items is on purpose.  A supermarket’s goal is to sell you more.

The express lanes offer what is called “a perception of control” reports Emily Moscato, assistant professor of food marketing at St. Joseph University in Philadelphia. Customers believe it’s a faster line also limiting the shopper in front of you with the overflowing cart.  There are also changes being made to the self-checkout lane.  SpartanNash, a Michigan-based grocery chain, use to dictate a minimum number of items to use this self-checkout lane.   Now that limit is gone.  Although some grocery stores are relaxing their policy, larger grocery chains such as Safeway, prefer their traditional ways.

There are eight ways to speed through the supermarket checkout:

-Shop weekdays, not weekends.

-Shop during normal work hours.

-Use a manned checkout lane, cashiers are generally faster.

-Pick the line with people with fewer items in their basket.

-Don’t buy items that aren’t labeled with price look-up codes.

-Avoid buying frozen items as the scanner doesn’t read icy codes easily.

-Choose items that are flat with easy to read bar codes.

-Don’t try and guess which lines will be slow.  There is always that person that has a ton of – coupons, pay with a check, or look for exact change.

Whether it’s correct signage, new equipment, SafeSourcing can provide you with all your service needs.  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.

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Zlati Meyer, USA Today, 9/25/16

 

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Why is the cost of Beef so high this year?

Thursday, May 28th, 2015

 

Today’s post is by Gayl M. Southard, Administrative Consultant for SafeSourcing.

In today’s blog, Gayl discusses the reason for the high cost of beef this year.

With summer fast approaching, barbecuing is on lot of families’ minds.  Because of the drought of 2012 in the Midwest, backyard cooks can blame the increase price of beef this grilling season.  The average price of sirloin is up 20 percent from last year.  An 8-ounce filet mignon is approximately $15 more at some Kansas City area stores.  Two pounds of lean ground beef may cost a few dollars more than a year ago.  Although beef is pricier, it’s hard to resist the smell of beef on the grill!

Many cattle farmers decreased their herds two or three years ago when the grasslands dried due to drought conditions.  Cattle, unlike fast growing chicken and pigs, require three years from breed to slaughter.  The gestation for a cow is nine months to deliver a calf.  We are about a year and half away from the price of beef to show a reduction.  This is good news to the cattle farmers, as they can reap the rewards of the higher price of beef now.

According to Tampa Bay Times, dated May 13, 2013, “’A year ago last November, for 350-pound calves I paid $1.80 a pound,’” Mc Intosh said.  “’Today, I might pay $3 to $3.50” a pound’”.  Cattle farmers have been trying to satisfy pickier consumers since the 1980’s when the shift from beef to poultry shifted.

Fortunately, if you prefer pork or chicken, those prices have barely increased, in fact bacon, on average, is cheaper.

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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When does demand dictate it is time for a spot buy versus standard replenishment?

Friday, April 4th, 2014

Believe it or not I recently visited a store of a major retailer?whose shelves looked just like this (not this picture) but unfortunately looked much the same.?To me that?equals a broken procurement department, a broken supply chain and maybe even a broken company?as well as ?a huge opportunity for a huge?spot buy with local suppliers if they want to resolve the issue quickly. The actual name and location are being?omitted here?to protect the guilty.

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What is The Certified Humane Raised & Handled Program?

Wednesday, February 12th, 2014

Todays post is by Ron Southard, CEO of SafeSourcing.

To begin with, we have many farms, processors and agriculturally focused companies as customers and suppliers in our database.

I was reading today in the Arizona Republic about proposed legislation by the states ranchers and farmers that would allow them to police their own farms for livestock cruelty. This is being supported by the Arizona Cattle Growers Association.?In fact if a public citizen takes a picture or video?of such cruelty and does not turn it over to them within 5 days it would be considered a class 1 misdemeanor. Isn’t this kind of like the of watching the henhouse with a shotgun? Nor to mention the constitutionality?of restricting free speech.?

There are programs out there that provide protections against cruelty in factory framing and The Certified Humane Raised & Handled program which is an inspection, certification and labeling program for meat, poultry, egg and dairy products from animals raised to humane care standards is one of them.

According to the Humane Farm Animal Care website over 10 billion animals raised for food in the U.S. annually endure inhumane treatment. Most are confined such that they can?t behave normally. Chickens can?t flap their wings or move. Pigs can?t turn around. Crowding and stress from these conditions compromise animals? immune systems. They must ingest antibiotics regularly to prevent disease. Further, the current system of factory farms causes problems for the people involved, the environment, and consumers, as well as for the animals.

According to Humane Farm Animal Care the impact extends beyond the animals. Overuse of antibiotics in animals is causing more strains of drug-resistant bacteria. The Institute of Medicine at the National Academy of Sciences estimated the annual cost of treating antibiotic-resistant infections in the U.S. at $30 billion.

What can retail buyers do? Look for and buy products labeled Certified Humane Raised and Handled? and encourage the suppliers of your favorite food brands to become certified and to use Certified Humane Raised and Handled? ingredients in their products.

The SafeSourceIt??Global Supplier Database contains all suppliers that are Certified Humane Raised & Handled and we encourage others to follow this model.?For those companies that are found guilty of cruelty in factory framing practices or violate the laws that are there to protect our livestock, they will be eliminated from our database and not allowed to participate in events for our customers.

Please contact a SafeSourcing customer service representative to learn more about our risk free sourcing trial program.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Suppliers, what makes you different?

Tuesday, October 15th, 2013

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President of Operations and CTO at SafeSourcing.

One of the biggest Supply Chain topics for 2013, as it is every year, is the concern over rising costs and shrinking profits, and unfortunately this is the stigma attached to many eProcurement tools and practices.  We tell our customers and the suppliers who participate in our events it is about more than just price; it is about the overall value that is presented.

Today we will be looking at ways that suppliers can distinguish themselves from their competition in areas other than price.

Labeling and Packaging – Labeling and packaging are one of the big expenses in For Resale items for many retailers especially when it comes to Private Label goods.  Suppliers who are willing to work with their customers to develop packaging that will streamline the receiving and sales process can gain a big advantage over their competitors in a way they can leverage to great value.

Training & Professional Services – One of the easiest ways for suppliers to begin to separate themselves from the pack is in the area of professional services and training.  For the supplier these services can generate a value to their customers that far exceeds the actual cost of the service itself.  In this case it is a win-win situation where the customer gets valuable services while the supplier gets an opportunity to continue to build on the face-to-face relationship in a useful manner.

Guaranteed Service Level Agreement (SLA) Metrics – The bottom line in any Supplier-Customer relationship is not just price or “bells and whistles” it is about how well the supplier delivered what they promised, how they dealt with situations when they didn’t deliver as promised and what they are willing to risk if they fail to achieve on the Service Level they promised.  Getting the best price means nothing if the product or service is of low quality or is late.  The best suppliers OVER service their customers and are willing to stake a portion of their cost on their ability to achieve that level of service every time.  These guarantees may not always translate to your bottom-line in a positive way, but not having them in place and receiving poor quality will definitely impact it in a negative way.

For assistance on helping you work with your suppliers on the extra value they can offer you, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to your comments.

 

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Suppliers, Toot Your Horn! Customers, Let them! Part I of II

Monday, June 10th, 2013

Today’s post is by Mark Davis; Sr. Vice President and COO at SafeSourcing.

One of the biggest gripes that suppliers have about procurement departments and Strategic Sourcing partners they work with is that they only care about getting the lowest cost and nothing about the value of what they are currently or can bring to the table.  Unfortunately there has been a precedent set by the procurement and “reverse auction” companies that has rightfully created this gripe in many suppliers.

Not every strategic sourcing company nor every procurement department sees things like this.  Many want to evaluate everything; the extra services suppliers can bring them, the rush orders at no charge, the extra reporting that is given at 10:00pm on a Friday night, the waived fees, and of course they also want to look at price.  The problem that procurement teams face is that when all they are given by an internal owner or from the suppliers themselves is list of prices and a brochure it makes it very difficult to justify paying 15% more for company A when they appear (through prices and a pamphlet) to offer the same service or product as Company B.

Today’s post is for suppliers and their customers alike because it cuts through the “price is all that matters” conversation to get straight at what matters: value.  Suppliers need to be responsible for proving it and attaching monetary value to it and customers need to put more controls in place to ensure they get it.

The Value of Free – In a  recent post we talked about the cost of FREE.  Today we are talking about the VALUE of FREE.  Every Christmas the newspapers double in size as retailers fight for consumer attention.  When the same exact television is offered by two different retailers for the exact same price a decision must be made and when the consumer sees that one retailer is offering an extended warranty as part of the price the decision becomes easier because there is something free included, but that free has value to the consumer.   Business procurement is no different.  If two companies have the same price for their plastic bags or even if one company is slightly higher but offers to ship directly to your stores and the other will ship just to a distribution center where additional costs to go to the stores are incurred, there is a measureable value to that free service.  What may have been a higher cost for bags is now a lower total cost of ownership because you just dropped your costs to ship the bags to the stores.

At SafeSourcing we are constantly talking to our suppliers and customers about the importance of value and that while cost cannot be ignored, the overall value is what are trying to pinpoint in the projects we run.  The only way to accurately do that is to understand the “extras” a supplier can bring or is currently bringing to the table and attaching value to that.  Only in this way can a true decision that is best for the customer truly be made.  Tomorrow we will take a deeper look into the other ways value can be established.  For more information on how we can help you evaluate your current or future suppliers and the value they can bring you 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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Are you paying to much for your Retail E-Procurement solution?

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012

When you review using retail e-procurement tools you may not always get what you pay for. In fact you are probably paying way too much.

There are too many companies that have been at this for a long time whose pricing formula is way too high in the retail marketplace based on what they provide.

I was speaking to a large retailer recently that had an unlimited use tool in place behind their fire wall from a very large player in the e-procurement space. The recently converted to this companies cloud based SaaS offering without a significant reduction in cost. I asked what type of savings they have been able to achieve and how many additional associates they had assigned to write RFI’s and RFP’s as well as handle events, supplier communication, hosting support, training, report generation, specification building, data collection etc. The answer was a lot.

After we had discussed at least 20 different categories, it occurred to the both of us that the savings from our cloud based SaaS events were at least a third higher than the savings from the use of the unlimited tool in either configuration.  Even if you added in our fees, the savings were still substantially higher on event by event basis with SafeSourcing. There are a number of reasons for this. One is that to many times when retailers deploy a solution internally or as a SaaS offering they default back to their old way of doing business with a new tool once the solutions provider has left. Obviously staff additions have to be calculated into the ongoing cost. Supplier research is limited, the number of participants is fewer, training is inadequate and the result is lower savings and sometimes overall quality. Older companies also do things in old ways. There are proprietary cost frameworks to the SafeSourcing solution that will also drive higher savings. I won’t share that information here.

Another way that retailers over pay, is when an older company comes in and matches the lower cost of doing business with a newer and better provider in order to win the business. An example of this is the cost of IT infrastructure in an open source world. As such the model will not last because many of these older companies are not structured in such a way that will allow them to absorb these lower fees profitably over time. Over time your price will continue to rise. In fact next year, your price should go down if you are running the same event again. Hasn’t most of the work already been done in the past?

Some good questions to ask your prospective solutions provider would be the following.

1. How many events per month can one associate host?
2. What are you doing to automate your solution in order to take out cost?
3. Will we pay the same in year two as we paid in year one for identical events?
4. What percentage of your associates work virtual?
5. Is your cost higher because of your investment in office space?
6. Is your cost higher because of your headcount required to run events?
7. What are your average savings for events over $100K?
8. What are your average savings for events under $100K?
9. Can you even run events under $100K?

There are certainly more questions but you get the idea. Be careful out there. If you want the lowest cost and the best service in the industry give SafeSourcing a call.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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Here’s a repost that still has some legs.

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

I choose to post simply because I can
My wife seems to think it’s because I’m a concerned and caring man.
So why or when to post, just what is my deal
It could simply be that I just had a bad meal
A meal from a food source that was not really safe
That sickened me some
And just could not be traced
It’s origin cloudy I really get ticked
That many more people could also become sick
So I post a few comments on product safety and more
In the hopes that they become part of the cure
Whether near shoring or off shoring and from local suppliers too
We offer opinions hoping they’ll be helpful to you
It’s time that our supply chain start to get the game right
And that will only happen if buyers make the process more tight
With adherence to certifications and timely inspections
That are clearly executed against consistent directions
While we’re at it, it’s important to do and say what we mean
And while we tighten up our processes
Let’s try to keep them focused on becoming more green
With a supply chain that’s safer
And greener to boot
Our new posts can discuss how to reinforce doing both, while still saving you some loot!

We look forward to and appreciate your comments. However, there is no need for them to be poetic in nature.

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