The May issue of RetailSolutionsOnline.com has an article by Erin Harris about the shift that is occurring in the retail industry “from focusing on labor just as a cost center to viewing their labor pool as a valued asset to drive customer centricity.”

When you think about all of the elements that contribute to the employee life cycle, you begin to see many opportunities for creative sourcing that can allow a retailer to really get the most out of their workforce.  Today we will be looking at a few of these to better understand how they can be positively affected by a good sourcing strategy.

Recruiting – The process of recruiting employees is such an important first step in getting the right employees for your business.  With so many local, regional and national players in the recruiting space and because so many retailers have the recruiting process happening in different ways all over the company, this is a spend category that may initially begin as an RFP.   A quality RFP can not only help to understand the offerings of the vendors themselves but also to help you collect and understand what your own company is doing in this area.

Task Management – Some categories such as Task Management solutions are a little more focused and understanding the side-by-side features as well as how your company is handling the process is a little easier.  As a result, Task Management may a little easier sourced and is something that a strong competitive bid collection to compress the vendors’ pricing is all that is needed.  If it makes sense, this is a good path to follow because it allows you tighter, more competitive pricing, provides a detailed list of where these prices are coming from as well as a realization of savings and services that can start within weeks of the event.

Performance monitoring – One thing that is often overlooked in the process of improving the management of your workforce is the overseeing channel that monitors how you and your company and employees are doing.  Understanding the options for Customer Satisfaction monitoring and how they should be integrated into your WFM processes are important pieces to this puzzle.  These services can be sourced as many of the other items of your business are and should be part of how you evaluate how your associates are handling your customers.

Regardless of which pieces of the employee lifecycle you choose to address first in improving your workforce management, know that there are companies who can help you research and collect the information you need to make the most out of your selection decisions.

For more information on SafeSourcing and how we can assist with this process, please contact a Customer Service Representative for more information.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

There are quite a number of educational sites that procurement professionals can visit in order to educate themselves as to best practices (I hate that term), strategy development, execution management and reporting. Some companies refer to themselves as e-procurement companies, some as reverse auction companies and others as strategic sourcing companies. Most will have an outline as to their implementation ideas somewhere on their website. It might be in a WIKI, a blog archive or in a products and services tab. The point is you can probably find one pretty easily and most likely it is better than what your company already has in place.

Typically the proof is in the pudding, which is to say there are many tools out there, but the services delivery model and what it is based on will be what determines how strategic you become if you follow it. I like to break the tools and services into three areas which are;

1. Analyze
2. Assess
3. Source

These areas can then be expanded to support most strategic platforms tools and services.

If your company is not particularly strategic, it does not mean that you can’t be. Who knows, you might event get noticed.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

?“Auld Lang Syne? is a Scottish poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and then set to the tune of a traditional folk song. Roughly translated auld lang syne literally means old long since but can be paraphrased into statements such as long long ago, the olden days, for old time?s sake or the good old days.

However, pining to much for the old days can have a negative effect on your planning for the days, weeks and years ahead. I?m sure as this author has, many of you have heard sourcing individuals say things such as ?we?ve always done things this way? or ?that won?t work for us?. In today?s world with all of its economic and global pressures, this is particularly dangerous way of thinking for sourcing professionals. The good news is that we still have some time before the New Year and we should use it reflectively to build our resolutions for the upcoming year that should then drive our sourcing business goals.

Although a number of strategies can be used for this thinking for both individuals and groups. The most important thing is to capture the data in its most raw form and then refine it from there. This may occur in group open discussions and white board sessions with a moderator or in private free thinking session where you personally write down all of your own random thoughts. The important thing is to write them down. Statistically people who write down their goals have over an 80% higher success rate of achieving them. Research tells us that of those people that do make New Years Resolutions only 75% make it past the first week of the year and the numbers drop dramatically from there.

We will be discussing our thoughts on e-sourcing and e-procurement resolutions for the New Year over the next few days in order to provide our readers with a base from which to draw for their own refinement.

Best of luck with your goals and we? look forward to and appreciate your comments.

 “Auld Lang Syne” is a Scottish poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and then set to the tune of a traditional folk song. Roughly translated auld lang syne literally means old long since but can be paraphrased into statements such as long long ago, the olden days, for old time’s sake or the good old days.

However, pining to much for the old days can have a negative effect on your planning for the days, weeks and years ahead. I’m sure as this author has, many of you have heard sourcing individuals say things such as “we’ve always done things this way” or “that won’t work for us”. In today’s world with all of its economic and global pressures, this is particularly dangerous way of thinking for sourcing professionals. The good news is that we still have some time before the New Year and we should use it reflectively to build our resolutions for the upcoming year that should then drive our sourcing business goals.

Although a number of strategies can be used for this thinking for both individuals and groups. The most important thing is to capture the data in its most raw form and then refine it from there. This may occur in group open discussions and white board sessions with a moderator or in private free thinking session where you personally write down all of your own random thoughts. The important thing is to write them down. Statistically people who write down their goals have over an 80% higher success rate of achieving them. Research tells us that of those people that do make New Years Resolutions only 75% make it past the first week of the year and the numbers drop dramatically from there.

We will be discussing our thoughts on e-sourcing and e-procurement resolutions for the New Year over the next few days in order to provide our readers with a base from which to draw for their own refinement.

Best of luck with your goals and we  look forward to and appreciate your comments.