Does your company buy name brand printer ink?

June 14th, 2013

Remanufactured printer ink looks the same, prints the same, and even has the same quality!

Today’s post is from Sarah Kouse a project manager at SafeSourcing.

If you are buying name brand ink (HP, Epson, Canon, etc.) for your printer when you run out, you may be spending a significant more than if you were to purchase an “off-brand” or remanufactured printer ink.

Remanufactured printer ink looks the same, prints the same, and even has the same quality, but could potentially save your company a significant amount of money if you switched from the name brand ink, and if your spend is large enough it might event get your current supplier to lower your name brand product in order to keep your business. This of course depends which product they make the most margin on.

By way of a recent example, a black ink cartridge for an HP Officejet printer that goes for around $40, you could get a combo pack set of remanufactured ink, including all of the colors (Black, Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow) for around $30. That’s about $7.50 per cartridge and 25% below your current price. If you were buying just black ink, you could purchase 5 times the amount of remanufactured black ink for the price of one single name brand cartridge. Obviously the results may differ based on volume.

The savings generated by switching to remanufactured ink can be significant, especially based on the amount of printing most companies do.

If you’d like to learn how we can help your reduce your printing costs, contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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

June 11th, 2013

In a world that focuses on cost how do you know what value adds your vendors are giving you if you don’t encourage them to tell you?

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.

Yesterday we began talking about the VALUE of FREE and how suppliers need to do a better job of tracking this for their customers and reporting on it on a regular basis so that improvements can be seen and, if necessary, changes in process can be made.  As we continue today we will wrap up by touching on a few additional areas suppliers need to keep in mind when working with their customers and the reasons why customers need to encourage their good vendors to do this.

Measure the results – As suppliers/vendors it is your job to keep track of the progress you are making.  Do not assume that your customer is keeping track of the money you may be saving or the on-time delivery or the quality of product or the quick resolution of issues.  It is your duty to ensure that you measure your success with that customer.  Logistics companies: make sure you track the time between order to pickup to delivery.  Service companies: be working on the ever important ROI on the very first day you begin working with your customer.  Manufacturers: track the lead time for every item ordered by your customer and where possible, show where you have improved it.   Never assume that your customers are tracking what you do for them but ALWAYS assume that eventually someone is going to ask what value you are bringing to them to justify your cost.

Track the extra and Toot the Horn –  Right on the heels of tracking your results is making sure you record the little extras you bring to your customers.  Whether you create extra reports, or visit the customer’s site to meet with their team, or you keep your staff over the weekend to assist with a critical issue, record everything and do not ever be afraid to toot your own horn to your customers to remind them of the extra effort they are getting from you.  They may not realize what you have done and in time without you telling them they will come to expect it as part of the package and you will find yourself continuing to do more work for the same price. 

On the flip side, customers tell us all the time that they don’t want procurement involved because their relationships are too important.  Our response it always the same, “Great!  Let us help you quantify what your incumbent is doing for you today so that we can compare that to what the market is doing for other companies.”  Encourage your suppliers to record the extra things they do for you otherwise someone sitting in a very important office somewhere in your company is going to see that Company X is charging you $10 per widget when they know very well from their last job that Company Z only charges $8.  Without documentation of the extras (with some measurable value attached) you will likely find Company Z and their $8 widgets as your new vendor and Company X out the door.

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

June 10th, 2013

In a world that focuses on cost how do you know what value adds your vendors are giving you if you don’t encourage them to tell you?

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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Thanks WALL STREET JOURNAL! The best job in the world is that of a Supply Chain Professional!

June 7th, 2013

Where else can you touch so many differant areas of a business or learn about so many different subjects?

Today’s post is from Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing!

I have harped on this subject for years. The other top bloggers in our space have as well. The simple fact is that companies that have their entire procure to pay supply chain in order and modernized will be far more successful today and in the future than companies that don’t.

These companies for the most part have up to date clean and accurate data to act upon. They have that data upon demand and  their entire organization can turn on a dime based on that data when and if they need to. I cannot even begin to tell you the number of categories we have sourced for our business partners from Legal services to Band-Aids in the Retail, Energy, Manufacturing, Agriculture, Healthcare and other industries. We have sourced entire products from commodity to finished good. When individuals  do this type of work, their knowledge base  as to how the world works increases exponentially, the subjects they can discuss are endless and they become  more interesting individuals to interact with and be around.

However, you don’t need to just listen to me, and I almost fell off my chair when I saw this article in today’s issue of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. The article is titled Hot New MBA: Supply Chain Management by Melissa Korn.  The article reviews what many of us have known for a long time. This is an interesting, ever changing, technology driven field that requires our best and brightest. But don’t believe me, read the article.

If you’d like to speak to one of our well informed and interesting associates about your sourcing needs, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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You call that “Customer Service”?

June 5th, 2013

There’s no doubt you've been on the receiving end of lousy/bad customer service a time or two!

Today’s post is from our newest customer services manager Dennis Nicoletti

Today’s post is by Dennis Nicoletti, Manager of Customer Service at SafeSourcing. Dennis wants to know if you’ve ever been told “I am sorry, but there is nothing else I can do.” 

There’s no doubt you’ve been on the receiving end of lousy/bad customer service a time or two. You’ve come to a company with questions only to be told by a monotone voice to press this or click that until you arrive once again to your starting place with no help at all. Or worse, you’ve reached some uncaring CSR (Customer Service Representative) who calls you by name but delivers nothing to address your concerns or answers your question(s) satisfactory.
Back in the day…you were raised with basic good manners and along the way ever joined a service group, like the scouts or 4-H (do you remember?), then you’ve got the groundwork for providing excellent customer service. The foundation you need is one of courtesy, caring and an attitude that lets your customers know that you they matter-and that you care. There are skills and technologies that can help you put it all into practice.

Making the most of every opportunity – Whatever your company does, no matter how you do it, you make a promise to each and every customer that darkens your door. The consumer pays you something, and you promise to provide a product or a service. There are multiple pledges of benefits and quickness. Customer service involves living up to your word on these matters, but it really shines when something goes wrong.

The table has turned – Now you find yourself on other side of the equation. You own a business or you manage a department and you want your customers to be happy, to come back for more products or services, and even more importantly; tell others great things about your company. So what should you do?

Mistakes are opportunities — An unhappy customer will become a loyal consumer if you fix his/her complaint and do it quickly. Eighty percent (80%) of these folks will come back to you if you’ve treated them fairly. That percentage rises even higher if you respond immediately.

Aligned Sales and Service Departments – At SafeSourcing we created the framework for our company to keep sales and service closely tied together. Each department shares in the goal of excellent customer service. Authority to resolve problems is what people need to keep customers happy.

If you’re procurement team is searching for the right company to treat you with great importance while helping you to reduce costs, you need not go any further. We at SafeSourcing are committed to helping our customers and can assist you by explaining our strategies for assisting departments that historically have not wanted outside “help.”  For more information on these strategies 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. 

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

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Taking a look at IT Field Services

June 3rd, 2013

As the IT world continues to change, what role could outsourced IT field services play for your company?

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

There are a number of trends occurring in the support of IT products and processes today, not the least of which are the trends of increasing expansion of business through acquisition and the decreasing number of qualified resources with experience necessary to perform the tasks a company needs.  When you couple these two trends with the trend of employees having shorter and shorter stays working for a company, it is no wonder companies are looking to outsourced IT break fix and managed services to provide a backup to their existing staffs.

In today’s blog we will be looking at a few of the points to keep in mind as you explore this area of managed services for your company; looking at your current landscape, the questions you should be asking about where you want to head as an organization and the methods you can use to evaluate the vendors against your eventual goals.

Current Landscape – As with any project, understanding where you want to go starts with understanding where you came from and more importantly, where you are now.  With acquisitions and growth happening in so many industries it becomes a challenge to support new infrastructures and IT equipment that the existing staff may have no familiarity with.  This is especially true in the retail industry where new acquisitions can mean new Loss Prevention equipment, new scanners, new Point-of-sale equipment and software.  Geographic expansion can also create difficulties as recruiting and managing your own IT resources requires looking at areas the company may have less knowledge.  Outsourced field service companies can be a great addition to assist in bridging the gap of new equipment experience or geographical coverage on either a temporary or permanent basis.

Create the Project – How you know where your company is currently, the next step is to determine how the outsourced supplier will be used by your organization.  In the case of expansion this may be filling geographical needs that your current staff cannot support or it could mean providing a temporary knowledge bridge of unfamiliar equipment until your own staff can be brought up to speed or the equipment can be standardized to something more familiar.  Some of the things that will need to be determined with your organization are:
•   Pricing – Generally there will be a “per incident” or monthly flat fee offering.
•   Flow of support for issues from your employees to the supplier
•   The purpose of the managed provider – Staff augmentation (temporary or permanent) or special projects.
•   The services you will be expecting them to perform.

Evaluate the Suppliers –  Once you have determined your current needs and the plan for how best to fill them it is time to evaluate the suppliers who can help you.  Depending on the level of service you have details for; this may begin as a Request for Information, gathering general information about what each supplier can offer and who they are working with today as well as their preferred pricing model.  If the scope of service is well-determined moving right into a Request for Proposal would be the first step.  Locations, detailed service expectations and equipment count are all important pieces that would be needed for suppliers to provide you with accurate pricing.  Once this has been collected and a Statement of Work and pricing model have been established based on the RFP responses the final stage would be a Request for Quote or Tender, requiring all invited participants to provide pricing in the model you have requested. 

Outsourced Managed Services are becoming commonplace in how we do business and will continue to do business in the future especially for National companies how need services across a large portion or all of the country.  Maintaining your IT equipment is one of the fastest growing managed service industries and can be used affectively once your goals have been established for their use.  For more information on how we can help you evaluate suppliers against these goals 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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Contract Management 101 a Primer!

May 30th, 2013

A staggering number of fortune 1000 companies do not have contract management tools in place.

Today’s post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing

The shame is that the retail industry is at least that bad. And we wonder why retail profitability continues to be a challenge. Not having a contract management in place can erode 3-5% of hard earned savings from your e-negotiation best practices.

If you put a bunch of senior executives in a room and ask them what they would like in the way of contract control; the meeting could last weeks. At the end of that time you might not have anything that resembles what you started looking for. And that is why we have the saying that a camel is a horse created by committee.

Most contract management systems have relatively short ROI periods. In fact a company might even be lucky enough as they go through their data collection process to find a single contract that when analyzed could pay for the entire system.

There are all sorts of benefits associated with using contract management software. Probably the most important and least recognized of which is finally having all spend data in one location enabling more effective negotiations. If you have ever run an e-procurement event and tried to assemble a simple specification or incumbent supplier data you already understand the time involved. Administrative costs alone can be reduced by 25-30%.  That’s a huge number in today’s world of insufficient staff.

If you want to get started, here are some basics that any system should be able to provide.

1. Create contracts
2. Maintain contracts
3. Control contracts
4. Track user access to contracts
5. Track and monitor the status of contract Meta data
     a. Award date
     b. Contract begin date
     c. Contract end date
     d. Begin delivery date
     e. Escalator language
     f. Notification clauses
     g. Termination Clauses
6. Automatically alert buyers and management of required actions
7. Custom Reporting
8. Supplier Scorecards

If you want to get started tomorrow, contact SafeSourcing and ask about SafeContract™.

We look forward to and appreciate you comments

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There are always going to be new costs associated with improvement! In this case, MEAT SAFETY.

May 29th, 2013

This legislation is not going to go away, so you will be needing signs, labels and labeling machines. Make sure you don’t pay too much!

Today’s post is by Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing.

According to an article in the denverpost.com titled New meat labeling rules take effect in US! by By M.L. Johnson, Associated Press which was first posted on 5/24/2113, Shoppers in the U.S. will soon have more information about where their meat comes from after new federal labeling rules went into effect Thursday 5/30/2013.

These labels will be required to indicate where the meat came from or  its country of origin as well as where it has been processed which could be different. Although many organizations are not in favor of this legislation, it is not going to go away any time soon. The cost of insuring that the foods we buy and consume are safe is enormous and the loses associated with sick or down time related to food borne illness has been out of control for a long time.

There are however ways to mitigate your expense when deploying new programs.

If you’d like to learn more about how SafeSourcing vetts the safety standards of members of our SafeSourceIt™ Supplier Database or how you can source these labels and labeling equipment more economically, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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The Future of Television and What It Means for Procurement

May 28th, 2013

Are you sourcing services for your company based on what you’ve always known to be your only options?

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

The current issue of Time magazine had an article on the future of television and what new companies are doing to offer alternatives to normal cable and satellite offerings.  The article goes into detail about how many companies are out there offering options for consumers to obtain TV programming without paying the cable and satellite companies big money to get it.  The reason many people are still going down the cable and satellite TV path is simple: they don’t know they have other options.   The reason why people who know about these options and still aren’t using them is also simple: they lack the know-how to do it.

The focus of today’s blog is to look into areas of procurement where the same process is happening and services or products are being purchased because no one has taken the extra time to look for alternatives.  Sometimes these alternatives are in their infancy and some require some expertise to implement them, but the potential return for your company can be staggering in the long-run.

Different methods, current applications – Some of the best ways to find new alternatives for your sourcing needs is to implement different methods to currently sourced items and services.   One hot area where this is happening is in leasing and renting.  Recently we performed a project for a customer who was looking to collect pricing on purchasing new and used equipment he had an upcoming need for.  We asked about looking into renting the equipment for his short term uses and he stated that he had never really explored the option.  The flipside to this is looking into purchase programs where you have historically rented/leased.  This is getting great traction in corporate uniform programs.  Companies are creating purchase programs for their employees to buy the uniforms and maintain them as well.  Where there is a corporate culture to support it, these programs are saving companies hundreds or thousands of dollars in uniforms expenses.

Understand New Options – If you stay in business long enough it won’t take long to see that where companies are making money, others will follow.  When companies get too big and lose great employees, those employees have a tendency to start competing businesses and create new alternatives to old problems.  In both of these cases it means a constant stream of new players coming into the business world with new products and new ideas.  As is the case with any business, no matter how great the idea, if the business is not managed well it will fail.  This is important to your company because as you look for alternatives to some of your sourcing needs that you will find exciting new companies with options that need to be researched and followed up on before they can be chosen for business.  The key is to take the step to understand what they have and where they are currently as well as to commit to following their growth.

Know When to Take a Chance –  On the heels of stating above about monitoring new solutions without committing your business to them before they proven, it is also important to know when you have an opportunity to partner with a company with a revolutionary new solution.  Often times the cost will be lower but it will require an investment in resources and patience to make it work.  These opportunities arise many times in IT as new companies with breaking technology are emerging every day that will work with your company to make the solution work.  Knowing when it is worth the time and resources to invest is important and the return can pay great dividends.  Investing in a young company with a great solution that can quickly adapt to fit your company’s need without having to pay huge custom development charges is one of the big benefits to taking this chance.

There are new solutions emerging every day in every department that can reshape how your company does business in a way that will better prepare them for the future.  Knowing what those solutions are is half of the battle and determining what to do with those solutions is the other half but the results of investing time in each half can lead to great new possibilities for your company.  For more information on how we can help you research these new solutions 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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What differentiates SafeSourcing from other Solution Providers?

May 24th, 2013

How would you answer this question from one of your prospective customers?

Today?s post is by Ron Southard, CEO at Safesourcing.

I was speaking with a prospect today that has a great deal of experience in the procurement space, in particular the e-procurement space.? I was discussing the process that we use in order to source a category at a high level which follows six well defined steps.? Although we believe adhering to this process allows us to run high quality eRFX events, our prospect offered that these are pretty standard steps adhered to by most solutions providers in this space.? So what else makes you different was the follow up question. I could have bragged about our SafeSourceIt? Supplier Database or some of the unique features included in our SafeSourceIt? tool set. I might have event mentioned the? other members of the SafeSourcing? Procure to Pay product family like SafeSurvey?,? SafeDashboard?, SafeDocuments?,SafeContract?, SafePO? or SafeCatalog?. However that?s not the answer I gave. In fact I answered the question almost immediately. The answer was and is our People. Our people are simply the best.? Our team is made
up of project managers that come from a variety of industries, and they are supported by a Procurement Center of Expertise or CEO that have specific category expertise in Retail, Healthcare, Distribution, Logistics, Manufacturing, Energy, Agriculture and a variety of other areas necessary to insure that our strategies and execution are spot on.

At the end of the day, a lot of people can swim but not everyone is Michael Phelps. Lots of people can play basketball but not everyone is Michael Jordon. Millions of people play golf, but there is only one Tiger Woods. People make a difference. Or better yet people make the difference. I?ll put ours up against any solution provider. That?s why our customers and suppliers have had the following to say.

1.??No one else will do the things that you do to help us.?
2.??We would not be where we are with our Indirect Spend if it were not for SafeSourcing.?
3.??The entire experience was very well planned and the tool was easy to use.?
4.??SafeSourcing is a great business partner with terrific customer service and software.?

We?ll impress this customer as well.

If you?d like to learn more about us, please contact a Safesourcing customer services representative.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments

 

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