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

A seller-drive auction is an auction where sellers post goods for sale and buyers will bid on them. A good example of a seller-driven auction would be eBay. A seller would place a particular item that they want to sell online, and buyers wanting to purchase that item will place bids trying to ultimately win the auction for the product (s).

An often-overlooked tool is an online Forward Auction. Forward Auctions can be used to reduce over stock and decrease associated loss prevention costs.

Online forward auctions are an ideal way to get the best price for capital equipment, materials, overstock, and services you may want to sell, such as when you need to liquidate excess inventory. There are two basic types of forward auctions. The first is a liquidation or Forward auction where sellers are reducing inventory from overstock or liquidation.

If you’d like to learn more about how SafeSourcing can assist in properly identifying and selling your overstock and other back-room accumulations through the use of a SafeSourceIt™ Forward Auction, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

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

With the supply chain being in the turmoil that it is today does this process still work and can mid-market companies even afford it.

Collaborative Planning, Forecasting, and Replenishment (CPFR) is a type of software system that enables businesses to interactively share production, inventory, and order information online with their partners. Its main concept aims to enhance supply chain integration by supporting and assisting joint practices. CPFR seeks cooperative management of inventory through joint visibility and replenishment of products throughout the supply chain. Information shared between suppliers and retailers aids in planning, satisfying customer demands through a supportive system of shared information.

What are your alternatives to Collaborative Planning, Forecasting and Replenishment? SafeSourcing has written about this subject many times. You can find them in our SafeSourcing Daily Blog that has published over 3500 articles on a variety of topics. Please check into these three or research the rest of our archive yourself. What is Collaboration? Part I. What is Collaboration? Part II and What is Collaboration? Part III of III.

If you would like to learn more about our daily blog philosophy please contact a SafeSourcing customers services associate.

Today’s blog is by Gayl Southard, VP of Administration at SafeSourcing.

As drivers return to the road, ethanol prices are reaching record highs.  Ethanol, the corn-based fuel, is a common gas additive, has risen about 50% in 2021.  The price pushed to over $2 a gallon earlier this year, the first time since 2014.  Gasoline prices are the highest they have been in seven years, averaging $3.41 a gallon as of November 8 reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.   The increase equates to $1.31 from last year.  Commodity prices in general have risen.  Agricultural prices have risen as the supply chain has been clogged.  It has been reported that refineries have been producing more fuel but have not been able to keep up with the demand.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the production of ethanol fell to all-time low last year as people stayed off the roads, leading to ethanol production to stop and the closure of unprofitable plants.  “ The ethanol margins that we’re seeing right now in the market are extremely healthy,’ said Ray Young, ADA’s chief financial officer, on the company’s  earnings call.  ‘And that is just reflective of a very tight supply-demand situation right now.”1.

Farmers have indicated the price for fertilizers used in corn crops have increased substantially.  This has pressured farmers to plant less corn (a fertilizer intensive crop) in favor of soybeans that use far less fertilizer.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk

Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

References……………………….

1. Kirk Maltais, WSJ, 11/11/2021

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

What issues are you having with you inventory?

We hear a variety of issues/excuses every day of the week.

1. Cannot get the items you want even if they are on order
2. Cannot figure out acceptable substitutes for items you cannot get
3. Cannot find a new or additional sources of supply to make up the difference.
4. Stuck in a sole source environment.
5. Not sure of what inventory you should commit to post pandemic.
6. Not enough workers available to manage incoming inventory or returns.
7. Do not want to tie up too much capital on potentially excess inventory.
8. To many yet unknown supply chain issues to deal with!
9. Not structured properly to decentralize inventory.
10. No collaboration program with other companies that may have inventory to share.

I could add another ten issues right of the top of my head! Why? Because we hear it every single day from every single customer as well as every single supplier. Many retail customers do not have products to fill orders and many suppliers do not have product capacity to bid on new business.

There are creative ways to work around these situations. They may not fix all your issues, but they well may fix or solve many of them and keep customers from looking elsewhere.

Is it secret sauce you might ask? In some sense yes, because companies like SafeSourcing, a SaaS based sourcing platform for all categories know where alternative sources of supply are because we deal with more of them than you do on a regular basis. We also must produce temporary solutions for the current situation of which you may not think.

I am however not going to share any detail with you. If you think I addressed some of your issues, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative and we can talk. We might save your people invaluable time that can be used in other areas. If you would like to speak with me directly, Contact SafeSourcing and they will transfer the call.

Best of Luck!

Todays post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

If used properly a large supplier database like SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database provides companies with   readily accessible data that supports growing their spend with e-procurement tools

Companies should have continuing success when running prior e-procurement events over again, one area of commonality that has historically made this difficult is a lack of new sources of supply.

There is a proper way to ensure the sustainability of your eSourcing events such as RFI’s RFP’s and RFQ’s or Reverse auctions going forward. Since you have already conducted or should have conducted a detailed discovery the 1^st time around a robust supplier database like the SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database Query Tool with over 500,000 supplier companies will allow you to do the following based on up to date vetted data.

• Conduct a detailed supplier discovery
  • Rank the suppliers
  • By Size
  • By Experience
  • By References
  • By Environmental certifications
  • By Safety Certifications
  • By Location
• Develop a three-year supplier game plan
  • Identify suppliers for each category over the sourcing horizon
  • Develop a three-year supplier rotation bidding schedule
• Ask the following questions
  • What suppliers will I invite and why
  • Keep in mind the unique benefits of distributors vs. manufacturers
  • Discuss potential award of business strategies

If you don’t have a reliable new source of supplier information and only use the same suppliers that you originally used to conduct your category sourcing events, don’t expect continuing savings as you really don’t have the appropriate leverage points. If you don’t know where to access this type of data, please contact SafeSourcing.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.