Top 5 Sourcing and Procurement Techniques
With sourcing and procurement, a solid strategy is essential to ensure that your ROI is strong, your relationships with your suppliers are doing well, and that your team appropriately supports your stakeholders and company’s overall goals andobjectives.
Sourcing and procurement in supply chain management play some of the most important roles. Sometimes it’s not always about sticking with the same sourcing and procurement techniques that have worked in the past but keeping your mind open to new ideas and new software.
Read on to learn more about the top sourcing and procurement solutions and how you can integrate them into your workflow.
Top Sourcing and Procurement Techniques: Transparency
More than ever, it’s important to promote transparency in your procurement and eSourcing processes. Your stakeholders should be able to see all of the data of a specific request or order from beginning to end, including current status, next steps, any issues, and tech specs, without having to request this information from you.
Firstly, there’s no need not to be transparent, and having people wait for you just slows the entire process down. This very much comes down to sourcing and procurement software: the right platform should automate many of the steps in your process. Furthermore, doing the work should automatically create dashboard reports that provide status to any stakeholder without your team having to create reports.
Top Sourcing and Procurement Techniques: Inventory Optimization
It’s easy to overlook inventory management sometimes. However, it’s very true that holding onto inventory for too long—even if it’s not a consumable or perishable item—can wreak havoc on your ROI.
Think about warehouse fees, taxes, insurance, and other costs that can add up over time. You always want to take a look at your inventory and optimize it the best you can regularly. Inventory that sits too long runs the risk of becoming damaged or spoiling. Generally speaking, you want inventory moving out of your warehouse regularly.
Top Sourcing and Procurement Techniques: Supplier Engagement
It’s easy to let relationships with suppliers grow stagnant, particularly if you’ve worked with your strategic suppliers for years. But it’s important to remember that there is still competition out there, and you can be replaced at any time. So, you should practice transparency with your suppliers similarly to how you practice it with your team.
Also, you should be periodically performing vendor evaluations on your end (hopefully with a software suite) to determine if there is someone better suited for your needs at a better price. Lastly, always pay your vendors on time. You don’t want to receive services and goods after the deadline, so don’t pay your suppliers late, either.
Top Sourcing and Procurement Techniques: Global Sourcing
Your sourcing and procurement process flow may consist of only local or nationwide vendors, but it may be time to consider a global reach to get the most out of procurement management.
Global sourcing may help you get the good or service you need at a more economical rate; however, with this type of sourcing comes risk, so it’s advisable to have a risk management team in place to help mitigate or evaluate risk if it exists in global markets.
Top Sourcing and Procurement Techniques: Automated Procurement
When it comes to sourcing and procurement techniques, having the right type of software to do the job is one of the most important things. Gone are the days when everything was written by hand and contracts were negotiated via phone call or across a table.
Today, you should be using cloud-based software that allows you to run everything from spend analytics to eRFX. The right type of software also integrates supplier management and invoicing and allows transparency across the board. The benefits of automated procurement are many, including better transparency with your team, happier stakeholders, better collaboration, and improved relationships with your suppliers.
If you’d like to hear more about sourcing and procurement solutions, or if you’d like a software demo, contact EC Sourcing Group today at 973-936-9672. We want you to re-imagine the way you think about procurement.