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

A few weeks ago, in a move to support the President’s “Campaign to Cut Waste” initiative, the U.S. Department of Treasury mandated that a new Internet Payment Platform will be up and running in 2012 all commercial vendors being required to submit their invoices electronically in 2013.  This trend is being mirrored by companies all over the world as the cost of generating and mailing paper invoices increases at an alarming rate. 

Today we will look at some of the factors to keep in mind when considering your own plans to migrate away from paper invoices and toward an electronic platform.

One solution or two – The first thing that the business needs to do is determine the scope of the transition they plan to make.  The obvious first step is to examine the invoices you send out because of the internal costs associated with generating and mailing them.  Other companies may also have new corporate initiatives to become more “green” and choose to incorporate the invoices they receive into the e-invoicing project right from the start.  Whether you keep these two pieces apart or together finding a solution provider that can handle them both is an important first step. 

Develop a transition plan – Once the scope of your project has been established, the transition plan the business can feel comfortable with must be developed.  Invoicing is such a sensitive process for businesses and the way the process is modified, for any reason, is one which has great importance at the executive levels.  The majority of successful transitions to electronic invoices include plans to gradually phase out the paper statements a portion at a time.  Whether that is 20% per quarter, 10% per month, or some other method, the transition plan will be as important as the tools you choose to implement.  An additional piece to this step will also be to determine a total compliance level that the business is willing to accept as some customers and vendors may not be able to handle an electronic invoicing process.

Communication with customers and vendors – As with any change that involves an embracing of technological processes and equipment, the transition to e-invoicing needs to be communicated to your customers and vendors clearly and with a well-defined timeline for what the transition means to them.  It will be important that all customers and vendors understand the reasoning behind your transition and that it will be a move they will eventually need to make.  The recommended first step would be communicate the plan and determine which of your customers and vendors that are willing to voluntarily make the move to electronic invoices immediately.  After these are moved it will be time to implement the transition plan for the remainder of the group that you have set as a result of the step above.    

For more information on finding the right solution partners to assist you with your transition to e-invoicing, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.

What is your procurement organizations overall procurement strategy? All to often, when this author asks this question, the response I  get is  that deer in the headlights look that says to me there either is not one in place or the person I’m asking the question of has know idea how to answer the question. If there is no procurement strategy, there certainly is no supportive negotiation strategy because how companies negotiate should support their overall procurement strategy or at least it should.

The cause for the above is quite often that there is no formal procurement organization in place to begin with or the function is lost within a supply chain organization, logistics organization or finance organization. And sometimes it is located in operations and spread all over the place.

It’s a good bet that  if there is no well defined organizational procurement  structure within a company that there are multiple maverick negotiation strategies going on and that many of the associates conducting these negotiations are not skilled at doing so and don’t  have any advanced tools other than spreadsheets, email and telephony to conduct the negotiations with.

The result of the above is a lack of collaboration and well thought out aggregation, maverick buying, expired and or ever greened contracts and much higher than needed cost structures.

So before you can negotiate effectively you will have to go back to the drawing board and develop a procurement strategy. Once that’s in place negotiation best practices can follow.

Check back tomorrow for part II where I’ll offer some suggestions on negotiation strategy. If you’d like to learn more before then, please contact a customer services representative at SafeSourcing.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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

Yesterday we discussed how a company can begin to include its procurement team into the process of preparing for a re-branding effort.  Meeting with the Marketing team to understand the scope of the rebranding and timeline it will occur within can help determine the categories affected and the priority determined based on need, contract expiration and importance to the re-branding project. 

Today we will focus on four of the major areas that can be affected by a re-branding effort and that historically have led to strong savings when sourced and leveraged with increased re-branding budgets.

External Marketing Items – This category is one that will typically  be involved with re-branding projects.  It includes items that are used by employees in a variety of ways and that carry the corporate message and image.  Business cards, letterhead, and promotional items  usually carry the company logo and will need to be ready at the milestone in the timeline for when the re-branding will become public.  Also included in this category are website changes and other marketing literature such as brochures that will need to be refreshed and have strong savings potential.

Uniforms – In some cases company uniforms will be included in the category above as logoed clothing will be handled by one of the companies that provide other external marketing items.  For some companies, employee uniforms are a much larger part of their business and are handled by a uniform company that keeps an inventory of their uniforms. Due to the fact that changing branding on these items generally comes at an additional expense, this category can become complicated and is a big reason for handling it separately. 

Construction – This category can include everything from new construction, to remodeling existing buildings.  When it is included in the scope of the re-branding effort it can encompass furniture changes, signage changes, and as in the case mentioned in yesterday’s blog with Haggen, it can include changing the entire layout of a building.  Many times companies will have existing relationships established with vendors for these types of projects but the increased spend from a re-branding effort offers a good point of discussion with these vendors to ensure you are getting the best pricing.

Transportation – For those companies with branded vehicles either owned or leased, this category generally comes in a secondary phase of rebranding once the categories above have been dealt with.  The depth and breadth of changing this category over make a complex category however because of that and the spend associated with making it happen, it is one that frequently comes with opportunities for increased savings.

For more information on preparing your sourcing projects related to a re-branding effort, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

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

Last week there was an article in Progressive Grocer about how Haggen, a 28 store independent grocer in the state of Washington, was leading a rebranding effort in their stores to focus on the concepts of homemade products and community.  Decisions like these are always major changes for a company and ones that are not made lightly, and there are many things to consider in the planning of these moves.

Over the next two days we will be taking a look at the sourcing points to consider while rebranding is being planned and the types of categories that need immediate focus after the process is set in motion.

Marketing-Procurement Planning – With re-branding changes being driven primarily by marketing departments it is important that a collaborative meeting with procurement happen early so that the scope of the re-branding can be discussed and timelines shared for the different stages in the process.  Armed with the scope of what the re-branding will change and the timeline within which it is to happen, proactive steps can begin so that the procurement team is ready to source the products needed to handle the change.

Categories Affected – One major piece that the procurement team will determine early in the scope discussion will be to detail all of the categories that will be affected by the re-branding.  This will be a topic covered in more detail in tomorrow’s blog and at a high level will include major categories such as uniform related items, external marketing items, construction related items and transportation related to name just a few.

Matching Categories with Contracts – As mentioned above, the scope and timeline are critical pieces of information for the procurement team to know because with that information and the category research above contracts can begin to be examined to determine which categories have contracts that can be leveraged against the re-branding.  There is significant spend associated with re-branding efforts and it should be used when examining contracts for items that will be affected and that expire within the timeline milestones.

Communication – Understanding how the re-branding effort will be communicated within the timeline is a final piece of information that will be needed by the procurement team so that they know what and much of the re-branding can be communicated when doing their job.  Often the re-branding effort comes with other organizational changes that need to be kept confidential so understanding how the organization plans to communicate the re-branding is important.

In tomorrow’s blog we will discuss more about the categories affected by a re-branding effort.  For more information on preparing your sourcing projects related to a re-branding effort, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  

We look forward to your comments.