Today’s post is by Dave Wenig Senior Vice President of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing Inc

It’s too easy to be dismissive of a concept, especially when you have preconceived notions.

For years, conversations with prospective users and even some customers have often headed down a familiar path. At SafeSourcing, we’re talking about reducing spend and ending overpayment across all categories by an average of 24%. Then we learn that the contact is only hearing this in terms of some pre-defined set of categories. Usually that’s supply items or some other items the person deems are commodities.

What if I told you that the most impact in terms of raw dollars saved come from other categories? What if I were to say that the highest percentages of cost reduction often come from using eProcurement to source services and even custom items?

Some people would still not believe me or would still fall back on their misconceptions, even if I shared recent results like these.

• Armored Car Services: 21.61%
• Windows and Doors: 13.84%
• Floor, Wall, Ceiling Tiles: 40.37% (incl. installation)
• Cooler Glides and Shelves: 33.41%
• Exhaust Hoods: 21.33%
• Waste Removal: 24.04%
• Employee Assistance Program: 55.19%
• Common Area Maintenance (CAM): 15.97%
• Promotional Signage: 33.34%

Here is a quick test:

• When you think of eProcurement, what spend categories come to mind first?
• Have you competitively sourced any of the categories in the list in the past 3 years?
  • If no, why not?

For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

Today’s post is from our SafeSourcing Archives.

Those of us who are too afraid to fail, inherently play things safe. Those of us who play it safe, don’t set “unachievable” goals.  Those of us who don’t set “unachievable” goals, don’t rethink our mental models of what is possible for achieving success.

Of course, no one will say failure doesn’t hurt. However, it doesn’t have to be crippling, if we approach it correctly. In weightlifting we have to allow the uncomfortable microscopic tears in our muscle fibers to occur before those cells can rebuild bigger and stronger. In our personal lives, it we have to be challenged and tested, and shown where our blind spots are before our character can be improved. In business, sometimes we need to surpass our own expectations of what is possible, and test that with both success and failure, before we will know what we or our organization is truly capable of.

Nathan, my second youngest brother, is more of a risk taker than I am, and I suspect there’s a lot I could learn from him. He’s traveled extensively, goes sky diving, purposely seeks out random strangers in public to sit and have lunch with, and generally is always trying new things that I’d rather not.  But he has a method about it; If the only reason he doesn’t want to take a risk is apathy, he takes it anyway. However, if the risk is so great that failure would be unrecoverable, he doesn’t go through with it. He has a lower and upper threshold for the risks he takes, so that he’s never too inactive, but also never betting more that he can afford to lose.

The point of failing quickly is not to take on gargantuan risks. In other words, we don’t go out and bet the farm just to prove a point. There are foolish ways of taking on excessive risk of course.

The point of failing quickly is to expand our self-imposed limitations of what is possible within the proving grounds of activity that we can quickly recover from should the experiment be a failure.

Please contact SafeSourcing if you’d like to discuss how this strategy can help your sourcing projects.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

Today’s post was written 12 years ago by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing.

Most if not all of this is still relevant.

Companies with a few customers and companies with thousands of customers are often looking at the same types of issues. The process and the results are very similar regardless of scale and as such require the same careful focus to drive targeted results. If we were to white board what should be included in our procurement goals many of the following areas would be included.

1. Lower costs
2. Consistent and improved quality
3. Products that guarantee safety for your customers
4. Smooth transition to new supplier relationships
5. Quality product specifications
6. Unlimited new sources of supply
7. Well thought out internal and external collaboration and aggregation
8. Support for environmentally focused products
9. Support of CSR Initiatives.
10. Evaluation of low-cost technology solutions
11. Joining and collaborating with share groups or GPO’s
12. Review of Incumbent suppliers
13. E-Sourcing or e-procurement training.
14. Existing procurement tool evaluation
15. Existing contracts evaluation
16. Detailed spend visibility and evaluation
17. Off or Near Shore sourcing opportunities
18. Sourcing and Supply Chain Knowledge transfer
19. For resale sustainable practices review
20. Perfecting The expense category

As your organization develops their list similar to the one above, prioritization and elimination sessions will lead you to a best few focus areas from which you can refine your e-procurement goals for 2023.

Please use the above guidelines as a framework for your thinking. Remember that simple goals written down are the most achievable.

We appreciate and look forward to your comments

Today’ s post is by David Wenig; Senior Vice President of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing.

As we get ready to welcome in a new year, we often speak of our resolutions. Personally, the resolutions that we make are likely to include exercise more, become more environmentally conscious or lose weight. The same concept of resolutions should take hold in your procurement department. Take the New Year as a challenge to drive new initiatives that will reduce spend in a sustainable manner.

If our first resolution was to exercise more, we could also apply that to procurement. That is to say that we could take more steps toward efficient and effective procurement. You may focus your RFI, RFP and RFQ efforts on initiatives that have been deemed the most significant based on spend or some other factor, but what about all of the other initiatives that go unnoticed? How many of these smaller spends are allowed to continue year after year while your focus is on these larger spends? Make a plan to include more of your contracts and share that plan with your strategic sourcing partner.

If you were to say, “I want to lose some weight this year”, couldn’t you also say, “I want to reduce my spend this year?” Just like it is for a body, exercise will lead to weight loss. Stay on track with your procurement plan and you will see the spend dollars drop. Increasing your company’s strategic sourcing initiatives to involve all projects will have a significant impact on reducing your overall spend.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.