Today’s post is by Ron Southard CEO of Safesourcing.

A friend and customer that has been a CFO of a fortune 100 company and now owns his own business asked me the other day why our results are so much better than other sourcing companies. For the record, he has used and been exposed to many of these companies during his career. In fact his company’s primary focus today with his customers is focused on strategic cost initiatives.  As such we get to work together quite frequently.

My simple answer was that SafeSourcing is OAD Compliant! As you might imagine, I got that HUH look. I went on to explain that we have an Obsessive Attention to Detail or “OAD”. He simply said, can you give me an example? I went on to discuss how a company might source a service like temporary labor in the administrative space across multiple geographies and multiple job descriptions. We discussed the makeup of the job descriptions and the pay rates associated with those roles. By example I explained that most companies providing these types of services wanted to provide you an hourly base rate with uplifts for overtime, holiday and other related criteria. Further, I explained that the structure our event focused on an expanded list of job requirements so that our customer would not be overcharged as example for administrative support provided by an executive assistant when an administrative assistant was all that was called for. We further broke the rates down by geography, national upcharge, and unemployment tax and workers compensation by state. Most people are not aware that workers compensation rates are different by employer by sate based on their individual company ratings. I went on to say, another quick example might be someone wanting to source heavy duty pallet racking based on the current price of steel (Hint! Think Metal Indices) while overlooking transportation cost opportunities (fuel) as well as the services required (unloading) to deploy the end product across time and geography (local distributer).

Once my friend got the gist of what we were talking about, he asked me how we continue to insure that all SafeSourcing associates function in this way. The answer was simple. We demand it. Every category that we source goes through a thorough strategy development phase where our customer and our Procurement Center of Expertise associates educate each other. We use an internal process call Question AZ. That has nothing to do with the state of Arizona where I live; it simply means that we assemble a list of questions beginning with the letter A and keep adding questions through the letter Z until there are no more questions. Simple but affective We reinforce this internally with competitions on research, adding data to our WIKI and asking every associate to write a monthly blog on a category they are working on. All of this information is shared with the entire team regularly in debrief sessions. We always think through traditional sourcing methodologies, but leave room for thinking outside of the box. Just because someone has never run a category in a certain way does not mean it cannot be done that way.

My friend’s response was WOW! and last year he ran over 300 e-RFX events with us

The simple conclusion to the above is that you can have more advanced tools, more experienced people but if you are not OAD compliant you will never drive the same results that we do.

If you’d like to learn more about the SafeSourcing 6 step process that combines three distinct sourcing strategies into one event, please contact us.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Today’s post is by Ron Southard CEO of Safesourcing.

A friend and customer that has been a CFO of a fortune 100 company and now owns his own business asked me the other day why our results are so much better than other sourcing companies. For the record, he has used and been exposed to many of these companies during his career. In fact his company?s primary focus today with his customers is focused on strategic cost initiatives.? As such we get to work together quite frequently.

My simple answer was that SafeSourcing is OAD Compliant! As you might imagine, I got that HUH look. I went on to explain that we have an Obsessive Attention to Detail or ?OAD?. He simply said, can you give me an example? I went on to discuss how a company might source a service like temporary labor in the administrative space across multiple geographies and multiple job descriptions. We discussed the makeup of the job descriptions and the pay rates associated with those roles. By example I explained that most companies providing these types of services wanted to provide you an hourly base rate with uplifts for overtime, holiday and other related criteria. Further, I explained that the structure our event focused on an expanded list of job requirements so that our customer would not be overcharged as example for administrative support provided by an executive assistant when an administrative assistant was all that was called for. We further broke the rates down by geography, national upcharge, and unemployment tax and workers compensation by state. Most people are not aware that workers compensation rates are different by employer by sate based on their individual company ratings. I went on to say, another quick example might be someone wanting to source heavy duty pallet racking based on the current price of steel (Hint! Think Metal Indices) while overlooking transportation cost opportunities (fuel) as well as the services required (unloading) to deploy the end product across time and geography (local distributer).

Once my friend got the gist of what we were talking about, he asked me how we continue to insure that all SafeSourcing associates function in this way. The answer was simple. We demand it. Every category that we source goes through a thorough strategy development phase where our customer and our Procurement Center of Expertise associates educate each other. We use an internal process call Question AZ. That has nothing to do with the state of Arizona where I live; it simply means that we assemble a list of questions beginning with the letter A and keep adding questions through the letter Z until there are no more questions. Simple but affective We reinforce this internally with competitions on research, adding data to our WIKI and asking every associate to write a monthly blog on a category they are working on. All of this information is shared with the entire team regularly in debrief sessions. We always think through traditional sourcing methodologies, but leave room for thinking outside of the box. Just because someone has never run a category in a certain way does not mean it cannot be done that way.

My friend?s response was WOW! and last year he ran over 300 e-RFX events with us

The simple conclusion to the above is that you can have more advanced tools, more experienced people but if you are not OAD compliant you will never drive the same results that we do.

If you?d like to learn more about the SafeSourcing 6 step process that combines three distinct sourcing strategies into one event, please contact us.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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

Companies all over the world, including SafeSourcing, are making big decisions on moving their physical on-site data centers into a hosted virtual environment.  To quickly define what this means, it is the concept of creating virtual servers in a safe environment that act exactly like a physical server costing tens of thousands of dollars.  Each instance can be expanded or scaled back at a moment’s notice without the expense of shutting a server down and installing expensive hardware peripherals. In some cases the move can remove the use of dozens of servers consolidating them into the same number (or more) virtual instances that run on just a few pieces of computer hardware.

Obviously there are some advantages to going virtual as well as cost, performance, scalability, standardization and ease of use factors that should be considered when making these decisions.  Today we will look at a few of the benefits from moving to a virtual data center environment.

Cost Change – The first question many people ask in a switch like this is “how much does it cost?” or more importantly, “how much will I save?”  Answering this question depends a lot of the environment(s) you are looking to convert.  Converting one or two servers to a virtual instance will not see nearly as good of a return as those that are converting larger numbers.  The savings is present in both, however.  Virtual instances can be upgraded through the years with software, as the cost to upgrade the hardware is usually held by the ISP managing the virtual instances.  This cost occurs for many companies every 2-5 years at $10,000+ a physical server can mean big savings.  Besides those hardware costs there are also the reduction of costs normally associated with scaling servers up or down as seen below.

Scalability – Another problem with physical servers, apart from the cost aspect, is that they are difficult to scale easily.  This means adding more memory, more bandwidth, more hard disk space to increase speed or to add capabilities.  These typically require a technician to physically access the machine, usually power it down, invest time to install the new hardware and bring it back up all in a way that they hope will come with no issues.  There are several cost, productivity and security issues with this scenario that are eliminated in a virtual server environment.  Because the virtual servers are actually software only, they can have more hard drive space, or processing power or network bandwidth allocated to them with a click of mouse from thousands of miles away if need be.  This allows fast growing companies to adjust their environments as quickly as they are expanding the business at a greatly reduced cost.

Separation of applications – Virtually any IT professional will tell you that if it were up to them they would have each server running only an application or two in their data center.  Doing so would remove performance bottlenecks, more easily control security and would allow them to troubleshoot any situation quicker because the culprit would be coming from a smaller group of applications.  As any CFO will tell you the cost of being able to achieve that with physical servers is an impossibility.  Having your data center in a virtual environment may not be able to achieve the IT professional’s dream, but it can get them most of the way there as virtual server instances can easily be created at a fraction of the cost of physical servers.  Web servers, database servers, application servers, test servers, development servers can now be located in their own unique server instance allowing heavily used applications to grow in their own instance without having to upgrade hardware for every other application.

To understand more about how we can help you begin to layout the sourcing aspects of a move to a virtual data center, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to your comments.

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

After a very strong 2012 IT hiring trend, 2013 is looking to equal if not better that trend as companies grow and new technologies require non-IT companies to augment their staff to keep up, especially the in the areas of mobile devices and cloud computing which seem to be mentioned with every blog and magazine written.

Most IT departments have already completed their budgeting for 2013 and know where their needs lie but they may not yet have decided the best way to bring that talent in.  Today we will go over a few things to consider as you prepare to increase you IT staffs.

Temp VS Permanent – One of the biggest dilemmas IT departments have faced for the past 15 years is whether to hire temporary or permanent help.  There can be a financial upside to a permanent employee even with taxes and benefits over higher priced temporary employees but only if there is enough work and there is a management staff in place to ensure quality work gets done.  These are some of the biggest reasons why companies are moving toward augmenting some of their staff with contract employees especially for projects that have a definite end of life.  Having a healthy mix of internal and external resources is where most companies will find themselves this year.

Geek + Business is a Must – It has always been very important for IT professionals to be equipped with the technical expertise and knowledge for doing their job.  In years past, it didn’t really matter what other strange behavior, appearance or presentation came with the IT professional as long as they could do the tasks they were hired for.  With IT professionals today, interacting with and, more importantly, understanding the business they are in and how their customers use their products in order to make a better product will be crucial.   Companies will look to hire IT professionals who can understand dollars and cents as well as bits and bytes.

DIY or Third Party – One of the other areas companies struggle with is whether they should try and find the resources themselves or seek help from a third party.  The answer for this for many companies boils down to whether there are internal resources that understand enough of what they are looking for in order to make a determination of whether a candidate is a quality on or not.  Many recruiting agencies can charge a hefty price to find good talent but they are generally extremely well-equipped to evaluate the customer’s needs and the talent against those needs saving the company time and huge headaches down the road if they hire only ONE wrong resource let alone many.

To understand more about how we can help you build the best strategy to source your IT Labor needs or to provide you with alternative methods for reviewing those options, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to your comments.

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

If you look at best-in-class procurement organizations all over the world you will notice that they all have several traits in common.   Understanding the products and services the company needs to run its business, effectively managing the suppliers, and reviewing the effectiveness of deals that are made are all very important elements that make a successful organization.

One area that frequently gets overlooked by many companies is the relationship that needs to be fostered internally with all of the other departments.  So many times departments like IT, Research & Development, Engineering, Manufacturing, Legal and Real Estate are allowed to create and maintain their own supplier relationships outside of the procurement department because these departments tend to need goods and services that have a much stronger emphasis on value and fit rather than on price.   These goods and services also tend to need a lot of expertise in order to understand them fully in a way that will result in an effective evaluation of the different offerings.

The fact is, these departments are still buying products and services and a good procurement organization can help them with this process as well helping get the best price.

Internal Discovery Sessions – One of the greatest ways to get stronger in assisting the rest of the organization can come in the form of scheduled meetings with each of the departments in the company.  Discovery sessions with each department can begin to uncover how these departments operate and where their needs are.  Knowing these areas can begin to highlight where a procurement team can help the rest of the company.

Third Party eProcurement Help – Another way to can help a company’s other departments, especially those mentioned above, is to engage a third party strategic sourcing who can bring some of the expertise to augment the procurement staff in order to assist with projects of a more technical nature.  Gaining the confidence of other departments, whether it is which your staff or a third party, will open the door to help with many other projects and services.

Lead with Value (not price) Proposition – Many of the departments like those mentioned above are very sensitive about a “low price” approach for sourcing their goods and services.  While getting a good price is always important to every company, it will be important to emphasize the ways the procurement team can assist and bring value to the other departments rather than getting them the lowest price and rightfully so.  Many of the products and services are mission critical and vary widely from supplier to supplier.  Finding the right fit for these departments will always be at the forefront but that does not mean there won’t be ways to help them ensure their selection is at the best price possible.

For assistance on helping work with your internal customers, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to your comments.

Todays post is by Sarah Kouse and account manager at SafeSourcing

Before the internet, smartphones, and social media, marketing was all about word of mouth and advertising through mailers, phonebooks, signs, etc. That was fine with the resources that we had, but today there are much more technical and creative ways to market yourself and make yourself a brand.

Today, no matter how small or large the company, websites are a necessity. When you first hear about something, where company, service or product, what is the first thing you do? If I could take a guess, I would say you would go on the internet and do a search about it and learn about what it is all about. The internet is a very popular way many people get their information today.  It also reaches a larger audience.

There are three important factors to a successful website.  A company’s website should be detailed with information about the company, contact information, what the mission of the company is, etc.  Another important factor to a successful website is having the company logo be big and visible and the website should be eye catching with colors that stand out.  Lastly, the website should be easy to navigate through and facile.

As important as a website is to help make a successful company, engaging in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. are also very important. The social media networks have exploded in the professional environment just over the last five to ten years and it is only going to continue to grow.  For some people these types of services come easy to them and they know how to perform them on their own, but for others it is almost like speaking a foreign language to them. For the people that need assistance with these types of services, outsourcing this type of work so that it is performed properly and is looking the best it can look is a great option.

You may be thinking where do I even start, there are so many types of companies out there that do this type of work, and should I go with a local company to help or would a national company be more experienced, etc. SafeSourcing can help you find the best company for you to perform these types of services to help market your company in the best light.

If you would like to learn more about how SafeSourcing can help, contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments