Disaster Recovery Plan

February 17th, 2023

Do you have your disaster recovery plan in place?

 

Today’s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Director of HR and Administration at SafeSourcing Inc.

Recently there have been several major disasters in the news. Some are natural disasters, others due to carelessness, and even others due to war or political/religious conflict. Whatever the cause, innocent people will be affected, and help will be needed. So, what can be done now?

Right now, you can begin preparing for whatever might come. This is called your disaster recovery plan. These are plans set in place, so people know what to do when different emergencies happen. First, making sure people are safe is top priority during any kind of disaster. Having adequate alarm systems is one way to be prepared and ensure people are protected. Another way to be prepared is having employees trained on what to do during different disasters. Whether it is fire, flood, tornado, employees can be trained on where to go that is the safest. In addition, if you use a lot of data or have important files, having a backup of all data is important for any time disaster strikes.

If disaster does strike, be prepared to help and know what next steps can be. Rerouting supply chains, having back up production or distribution facilities, or reaching out to alternate suppliers can all be beneficial and can help keep things running after a disaster. Having supplier resources can also enable live saving goods to get to an area when in need. A procurement partner, like SafeSourcing, can help your organization with sourcing the services, supplies, or suppliers you need to help get your recovery plan underway.

For more information on what the SafeSourcing team can offer you, or on our Risk-Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative. We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

 

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Misconception: eProcurement cost reduction only works for commodities  

February 16th, 2023

Too many companies dismiss the power of eProcurement as only being useful for commodities and supply items. That is a mistake.

 

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.

 

 

 

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Fail Quickly!

February 15th, 2023

All failure may be painful, but not all of it is necessarily bad.

 

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.

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Are you managing your suppliers or are they managing you?

February 14th, 2023

Are you getting the best products and services for the best price available? I DOUBT it.

 

Todays re-post is from our SafeSourcing Inc. Archives

In to many cases, for many companies the answer to the question above is who knows on both sides of the relationship. And unfortunately this will not change for many companies.

Historically the primary driver associated with the use of reverse auctions and other related e-RFX tools has been to reduce the cost of goods and services and reduce expense in large part, if a retail company saved money it was deemed to be a successful process for the retailer as well as the awarded vendor. What about the other suppliers? What makes it a positive for them?

Supply base management or the attempt at it is the newest focus area of many strategic sourcing suites. Many vendors do not offer this functionality today; in fact some have trouble describing what it is when asked. Although elements of this functionality exist within a variety of surround type service offerings, no one vendor offers complete functionality in this area today even though they may think they do. A significant reason for this is suppliers concern with the thought of being managed at all because it means giving up perceived control. Additionally, retailers, suppliers nor vendors have agreed as to what the correct Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) should be or how to collect the data that would allow you to manage them. As these types of tools are developed, the most successful supply base management tools will be those that can manage the largest supplier database to the continual benefit of both retailers and suppliers that participate and compete for their business

This author believes that the most probable result of this process will be a set of automated robust supplier scorecards that monitor and report on supplier performance versus a range of KPI’S that are applied against well-known quality guidelines resulting in a continuous improvement procurement methodology.

If you’d like to know how SafeSourcing can help improve and measure improvement in your e-RFX process please contact us!

As always, we look forward to and appreciate your comments.

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All costs can be controlled. YOU ARE OVERPAYING!

February 10th, 2023

Even in the face of rising costs and inflation, costs can still be reduced dramatically.    

 

Dave Wenig is the Senior Vice President of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing Inc

If you talk with some executives or purchasers, they will tell you that now is not the time to work on controlling costs. Interestingly, some of those folks have now been saying that for years. Let me tell you a little secret – they are wrong. That opinion is costing their organization a fortune.

I do not intend to tell you all the categories for which we are still out here reducing costs, but I will tell you a few. The truth is, there are ways to control your costs that go beyond just reducing costs. Controlling costs can be just as effective.

These are a few of the dozens of areas where we are still consistently reducing costs:

  1. Paper Coffee Cups
  2. Waste Removal
  3. Equipment Rentals
  4. Plastic Cutlery
  5. Labels
  6. Print Fulfilment
  7. Bottled Water
  8. Retail Displays

As I said, cost reduction is not the only way to control costs. Other overlooked areas where an RFP or RFQ process can improve your cost control capabilities exist too. If you want to learn how other are using index language, multiple vendor awards, and other tactics to better protect their organizations against cost increase, let us know and we can focus on that next.

For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

 

 

 

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So, what’s on your procurement roadmap this year?

February 9th, 2023

Maybe it should be just good old COST REDUCTION. Because you’re paying too MUCH!

 

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

I was just reading a post from my friend Jason Busch at Spend Matters on LinkedIn. He was discussing investment in our space #procurement which always seems to draw interest from the investment community both Private Equity and Venture Capital.

A quote from Jason caught my attention, as it is what we do and what we have done at SafeSourcing for years. “Reframe (or extend) your value proposition to cost take out and cost reduction. Historically these solutions did fine in past recessions. Hard dollar savings never go out of style.  Even some carbon solutions can be reframed this way”! Jason also went on to say to “Consider services and solutions “surrounds” to improve the numbers if you’re not already nailing your plan”.

Isn’t it funny that the bottom-line basics of procurement are what they always have been, provide services (ours are white glove) and solutions that reduce costs, improve profits and earnings amongst other related deliverables.

SafeSourcing is a Procure to Pay SaaS based provider of a number of e-Procurement solutions and associated white glove services that are part of our SaaS offered SafeSourceIt™ eSourcing suite. These include but are not limited to SafeContract™, SafePO™, SafeDocument™ and our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database that includes over 557,000 vendor/suppliers.

For more information, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Services Associate.

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Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment or EIPP

February 8th, 2023

The only reason to not pay your suppliers on time and electronically, is there are none.

 

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

Paying invoices electronically  has been SOP (a thing given or done as a concession of no great value to appease someone whose main concerns or demands are not being met) for years, yet many companies continue to insist on paying their invoices with physical checks and snail mail trying to buy a few extra days of cash preservation. Often the response is that electronic payments are too expensive. Anyone with a browser can find out that this is malarky or meaningless talk or nonsense.

EIPP is short for Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment. This is a B2B system of issuing invoices to customers over the internet and receiving payment on the invoices electronically. This can be accomplished in a Biller-Direct model, where payment is received directly via the biller’s website, or Bank-Aggregator, where a banking institution acts as the payment distributor to all of the receiving businesses.

Help your vendors by paying your bills electronically and on time.

If you would like to learn more about our daily posts or other SafeSourcing free tools like our SafeSourcing Wiki, please contact a SafeSourcing customers services associate.

 

 

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With WFH, Do these measure still Motivate Employees?

February 7th, 2023

Here are 5 traditional ways to Motivate Employees that still work!.

 

Today’s re-post is by Gayl Southard, VP of Administration at SafeSourcing.

Traditional methods of motivating employees is all very familiar within organizations: good compensation and bonuses for targets achieved, praising teams’ performances, encouraging joint decision  making, and leading by example are all second nature to many business people.  As time and business evolve so must the ways we try to get the best from employees.  Listed below are five ways to motivate employees.

    1. Help Employees Understand the “Why”. When a new employee is added to your organization, make sure they are aware their role is vital. Explain exactly why they are doing their job and what they are out to achieve in making clients and customers’ lives easier. Give employees a purpose. A self-motivated employee is more personally accountable for their objective.
    2. Acknowledge all Progress Made. It is imperative for employees to feel like they are accomplishing something and their work makes a difference. Make sure to acknowledge progress is being made rather than a target not being hit. It is demotivating if a specific target has not been hit and giving up at that point is detrimental to future success. If employees receive recognition for whatever they do in the right direction, it will inspire them to work harder to exceed their objectives.
    3. Provide Career Development.Encourage employees to develop their skills, as well as the role within the organization. Opening job vacancies to existing staff will increase motivation and entice them to invest more in the organization.
    4. Encourage Work-Life Balance. Modern workplace puts emphasis on the importance of a balanced work-life. A happy employee is a motivated employee – develop fun and leisure activities in your organizations, such as celebrating birthdays, graduations, first-home purchases, as well as other significant milestones.
    5. Know Employees as Individuals. It is wise for Directors and team leaders to invest time in developing a good rapport with their employees. Every individual – even when doing the same job has a unique skill set and work style. Having an open-door policy so people feel you are accessible and open to their views makes them feel appreciated.

Safesourcing is motivated to help you achieve your business goals! For more information on how we can help you with your procurement needs 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.

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Executive Insight, Omar Hosari, 12/15/15

 

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Can We Collaborate?

February 2nd, 2023

Two heads are better than one!

 

Today’s blog is by Margaret Stewart, Director of HR, and Administration at SafeSourcing Inc.

You have probably heard that phrase so many times, you might not even recall the first time you heard it. The reason it is such a popular phrase is because it has remained true and helpful throughout. Even during early school years, we are taught how to work with others to accomplish some task – because it is such an important skill and helps to accomplish goals throughout life.

In our current climate, it is still important to be able to work together. We work within our organizations and use the skills of those strongest in certain fields to help the group as a whole. In fact, we do this so much that we choose people based on their strengths and their ability to fulfil the organization’s needs – making a hundred heads better than one.

Sometimes the need extends further than within an organization. This is where collaborating with another organization can help! In fact, this is something SafeSourcing does quite often. Let us say you need to source, as an example, plastic bags. Perhaps you do not buy enough to get much of a discount. Here we can collaborate. With a SafeSourcing collaboration, your plastic bag quantities and other organizations’ quantities combined can expand the resources available to you and could get you a more competitive price.

If you are not sure if collaboration is right for you, you can still collaborate with SafeSourcing to help you get the services or supplies you need from the vendors that can help you the best. SafeSourcing has the expertise that can help strengthen whatever project you are set to undergo.

For more information on what the SafeSourcing team can offer you, 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. http://safesourcing.com/ContactUs/tabid/60/language/en-US/Default.aspx
  2. https://www.zippia.com/advice/home-improvement-industry-statistics/

 

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How do you collect disparate information across your organization

January 25th, 2023

Accurate and timely information access is a must for successful eProcurement results!

 

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

At SafeSourcing we are often faced with customers not having accurate information. Often the best place to get it is from the end user. If a company has dozens to hundreds if not thousands of locations, there is often no company product designed to do this. SafeSourcing created SafeSurvey™ for just that purpose.

SafeSurvey™ is a user-friendly tool that allows users to create online questionnaires internally or externally to collect data within their organization as well as throughout the entire supply chain area of interest. SafeSurvey™ makes it easy to create a survey, track responses, as well as view and report the results.

Questions can be created to allow answers to be input through a Checkbox, Drop-Down List, Label Only, Radio Button or Text Area. With capability for both named and anonymous users to submit their responses, this tool is a perfect fit for quickly gathering a large variety of information from a small, medium, or large group of participants.

SafeSourcing is a Procure to Pay SaaS based provider of a number of e-Procurement solutions and associated white glove services that are part of our SaaS offered SafeSourceIt™ eSourcing suite. These include but are not limited to SafeContract™, SafePO™, SafeDocument™ and our SafeSourceIt™ Global Supplier Database that includes over 557,000 vendor/suppliers. To learn more, please contact a SafeSourcing customer services associate.

 

 

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