Today’s post is by Dave Wenig, Sr. Vice President of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing

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

In yesterday’s post, we covered some of the reasons why costs continue to rise across all categories. You’ve probably noticed this in your own personal purchasing experiences as well.

No matter why a certain cost has been rising, some of our customers have continued to work with SafeSourcing to push back against these forces. What we’ve learned has been interesting. At times, what we’ve learned has actually been genuinely surprising.

In the previous post, we focused in on a couple main reasons why purchasers feel they cannot control the rising cost. These were that they don’t want to disrupt their existing supply chain and that they don’t feel they have the leverage to have an impact.

So, what’s a buyer to do? Let’s get into some answers.

If you worried about potential disruption in your supply chain, we could say that this is unlikely if you manage the process well. We’re aware of the pitfalls such as delays caused by switching and we’re going to help you avoid that. What we’ve seen from experience is that patience wins out. If you’re likely to have continually rising costs over the next year and you choose to do nothing, then you have accepted the cost increases for the full year. No matter what. If you choose to work strategically and source a category even if it will take some amount of time to work through the change from your current source to an alternative source, you will eventually benefit from that new pricing model. Rather than accept 12 months of increases on top of your pricing, you may only have to tolerate 3 months as you work and be patient through the initial the delays. There are other examples, but this more short-sighted example seems to be common.

You do have leverage. Those that think they don’t have leverage as a buyer in this market lack the perspective that we have at SafeSourcing. We see customers of all sizes find success if they’re willing to put in the work with us and try. The reality is, there are always competitors looking to win your business. Many customers come to us with this concern without realizing that there are much smaller competitors out there finding success in sourcing already and they are likely to find even more based on their size. Regardless of your perspective on leverage, it’s important to trust the process that brings the vendors together to compete in real time for your business. Even in an up market, the process still causes margins to be minimized based on the actual market conditions. This can often be surprising when a vendor brings you a large price increase and you find out through an RFQ that the actual increase should have only about half of what they told you if not less.

Hopefully this helps you see that you do still have options and that SafeSourcing will be your partner to manage the project from end-to-end to help keep you on track. We’d love to hear from you if you have any other specific concerns outside of what we focused on here.  If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Today’s post is by Dave Wenig, Sr. Vice President of Sales and Services at SafeSourcing.

As a result of a variety of factors, you have probably noticed that costs are increasing. Regardless of whether you are responsible for procurement in your professional life, you can’t help but notice these trends. We’ve been working with our customers on this for about a year as we’ve been watching prices rise continually. We’ve covered that in our blog posts extensively as well such as covering the costs of lumber back in a May 2021 post.

Every day, we hear more from customers about why they feel this is happening in just about every spend category. Commonly cited issues include shipping container delays, labor shortages, and inflation. Each of these is either compounded in some way due to the changes in the economy related to COVID-19.

Unfortunately, we hear from many executives responsible for procurement that they feel they have no control over the rising costs.

Some feel that the rising costs cannot be managed because they don’t want to risk supply chain interruptions as a result of working to negotiate with their current vendors or working to find an alternative source of supply.

Others feel that they don’t have the necessary leverage to negotiate for better prices. Whether that’s because they have their own opinions of the market conditions or they feel that their purchasing power doesn’t offer them enough power in the negotiations, that can be a matter of perspective.

So, what’s a buyer to do?

Check back for tomorrow’s post and we will share some examples of where our customers have decided that they are going to continue to work against these forces and have been managing to find successes with our help despite the ever-rising costs that most are simply accepting.

If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

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

With the approaching Trick or Treat and Halloween season, families may be planning their costumes, parties, and sweet treats. Perhaps you are trying to coordinate all of the above. If you have ever looked around to find the exact things you need – from spooky, scary skeletons to bubbling, green-lit cauldron decorations – you will likely try to find the best deal on the things you need.  Unless you have a knack for magic, you are likely doing what many businesses do too – procure.

While you may go from hobby shop to hobby shop looking for glow in the dark spray paint and cotton to string through your yard as decorative spider webs, a business may do something similar with their items, be it napkins, cups, or overhead logo fluorescent signs. Both of these acts are types of sourcing and trying to find the right thing at the right price from the right place. Ultimately, the more often you source your supplies, the more familiar you may become with who has what and where the best values might be. Just like the Price is Right, if you watch the products and prices enough, you will be able to know what reasonable prices are for different products. This is where a procurement partner can help businesses efforts. A procurement partner, like SafeSourcing, has the experience and knowledge in order to help you find the products you need from vendors that are a right fit at a price you want. This coordination is how SafeSourcing does its e-procurement – and it is no trick, but rather quite a treat.

For more information on how SafeSourcing can help your procurement efforts, or on our Risk

Free trial program, please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service Representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Today’s re-post is by Troy Lowe; Vice President of Development at SafeSourcing.

With a lot of people spending more time working from home, you might have been introduced to the world of video conferencing.  There a lot of apps that you can use for video conferencing and one of the most popular right now is Zoom. If you spend a lot of time using the Zoom application, you could save some time and be more efficient by learning some of the built in shortcuts.  The keyboard shortcuts are used by clicking a combination of the keyboard keys.  Two things that you probably do most often while using zoom can be done by using the shortcuts “Alt+V” and “Alt+A”.  These two shortcuts allow you to start/stop the video and to mute/unmute the audio. Besides these two shortcuts there are many more shortcuts available for use.  For example, using “F6” will allow you to navigate among the zoom popup windows and “Ctrl+Alt+Shift” will move focus to Zoom’s meeting controls.  Memorizing the available keyboard shortcuts will make you more efficient because you don’t have to remove your hands from the keyboard to use the mouse.  Below are some other shortcuts that can be used.

Meeting Shortcuts:

➢ Alt+F1 – Switch to Active speaker view in video meeting

➢ Alt+F2 – Switch to gallery video view in video meeting

➢ PageUp – View previous 25 video stream in gallery view

➢ PageDown – View next 25 video stream in gallery view

➢ Alt+F4 – Close the current window

➢ Alt+M – Mute/unmute audio for everyone except host

➢ Alt+S – Launch share screen window and stop screen share

➢ Alt+T: Pause or resume screen share

➢ Alt+R: Start/stop local recording

➢ Alt+Shift+R: Gain remote control

➢ Alt+Shift+G: Stop remote control

➢ Alt+C: Start/stop cloud recording

➢ Alt+P: Pause or resume recording

➢ Alt+I: Open invite window

➢ Alt+N: Switch camera

➢ Alt+F: Enter or exit full screen

➢ Alt+H: Display/hide in-meeting chat panel

➢ Alt+U:Display/hide participants panel

➢ Alt+Y: Raise/lower hand

➢ Ctrl+2: Read active speaker name

➢ Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H: Show/hide floating meeting controls

Interested in learning how SafeSourcing can help your company run more efficiently?  If you would like more information on how SafeSourcing can help you,  please contact a SafeSourcing Customer Service representative.  We have an entire team ready to assist you today.

Todays post is from Ron Southard, CEO at SafeSourcing Inc.

During the period of January through October of a recent year a fortune 100  retail company conducted  a total of eighty seven  eProcurement events utilizing the SafeSourceIt™  eProcurement toolset consisting of on-line RFI’s, RFP’s and RFQ’s or Reverse Auctions. Of the eighty seven events (87), twenty five (25) were specific construction events. This represents 28.7% of all events run by this company. This did not include equipment or related products used by the general contractors to complete the construction projects such as roofing, flooring, fascia, concrete, electrical, plumbing, air conditioning and refrigeration, etc. These additional event results are shown below the construction list as in order to offer a more complete picture of the entire construction category.

Included during the general contractor bid submissions were a variety of specific line items related to the following categories.

1. Demolition
2. Site Preparation:
3. Sediment/ Erosion Control
4. Earthwork
5. Environmental and Wetlands
6. Landscaping
7. Asphalt Paving
8. Traffic Signage
9. Concrete Curb and Gutter
10. O.W. Improvement
11. Traffic Signalization
12. Storm water Management
13. Offsite Utilities
14. Water Service
15. Sanitary Sewer Service
16. Natural Gas Service
17. Electrical Service
18. Telephone Service
19. Fencing
20. Retaining Walls
21. Sight Lighting
22. UST

(Figure 2)

Construction Item Sourced and Savings %

1. Strip curtains 39%
2. Walk in Coolers 29%
3. Signage 79%
4. Graphics 35%
5. Impact Doors 60%
6. Roofing 20%
7. Fire Extinguishers 59%
8. Lighting 22%
9. Mill Work Display 40%
10. Concrete 18%
11. Cooler/Freezer Lighting 27%
12. Remodeling 17%
13. Floor Tile 67%
14. Fascia Graphics Package 28%
15. Construction site delivery – Trailers 12%
16. Storage Tanks 8%

These construction bids listed were for new construction sites and resulted in a 9.5% real price reduction from original bid submissions by the general contractors.

If you would like to read my whitepaper titled “Construction Sourcing with eProcurement Tools” please follow the link and go to the bottom of the page, or please contact as SafeSourcing Customer Services associate and ask about our “Risk Free Trail Program”.

Todays post is an oldie from our CEO Ron Southard that’s still pretty accurate

If your retail procurement team understands the procurement lifecycle of a product or service it will make its sourcing much more efficient. Ask one of your teammates to explain their understanding of the retail procurement lifecycle to you. You’ll be surprised as to how many different answers you get.

A good place to begin discussing this subject is in the discovery phase of a procurement engagement. It helps to get everyone on the same page. Surprisingly the process which is quite simple as a definition is not any different from when this author first learned it over 40 years ago in the U.S. Air Force.

Typically procurement consists of seven (7) steps. Where the confusion generally enters is that each step can have a process of its own or be interrelated with another step in the process. An example would be the contract lifecycle that easily fits within the negotiation cycle and the renewal cycle. Another might be that information gathering which is the generally accepted first step in the process can apply to multiple issues such as information gathering for the related product or services such as specifications as well as the information gathering of prospective supplier data.

As such, the simple steps to the procurement lifecycle that most individuals generally agree upon are as follows.

1. Information gathering
2. Supplier contact
3. Background review
4. Negotiation
5. Fulfillment
6. Consumption
7. Renewal

Most times keeping this simple model in mind will allow retail procurement professionals to answer the question; where are we in the process when a project gets stalled or off track?

If you’d like help evaluating your strategy, please contact the Safesourcing team to learn more.