Optimize Sourcing in Dynamic Markets

How can sourcing professionals maximize the value they create by balancing cost, value, sustainability, and business continuity? Download this e-book to get guidance.

Sourcing plays a critical role in volatile economic times. This e-book covers the following topics:

The current market challenges and opportunities
The importance of efficiency and collaboration in sourcing
How to make strategic sourcing more efficient and collaborative
How strategic sourcing can drive value and how to best capture that value

With strategic sourcing, you can reduce your organizations’ go-to-market time, lower costs even while improving business performance, and reach your organization’s other top priority objectives.

Download this e-book to learn how to:

Make the best of market opportunities
Discover ideal scenarios with suppliers
Improve decisions and execute on them better by aligning sourcing processes
And more.

“By making sourcing events and processes fast, repeatable, and automated, companies can quickly launch sourcing events for complex categories.”
— Optimize Sourcing for Dynamic Markets e-book

FAQ

What is collaborative sourcing?

Collaborative sourcing encompasses dynamic processes and technologies that allow organizations to get to market significantly faster and with optimal outcomes. It enables a clearer view of supply markets so you can understand the right time to go to market and get the best price and capacity from your suppliers. It establishes deeper and more collaborative ties with suppliers to create win-win outcomes. And, importantly, it is repeatable and helps break down silos between supply chain, procurement, and finance to provide a more robust end-to-end view of sourcing.

The e-book elaborates on six challenges that are especially pressing in recent times:

Cost structures: Companies are dealing with wild cost fluctuations, from transportation to raw materials to warehouse staffing.
Logistics: Every mode of transportation is affected. Ports and other key transportation nodes have experienced backups or expect to experience them in the near future.
Production: Although much of the world is adjusting to life post-COVID-19, pandemic-related disruptions are still causing ripple effects, including supply shortages, factory shutdowns, and more.
Geopolitical risk: These risks could have enormous economic consequences and potentially restrict access to vital goods and raw materials.
Inventory fluctuations: The last few years have seen massive inventory imbalances. Sourcing, procurement, and supply chain are under increased pressure to work together to right-size their inventory, but it’s not an easy or quick fix.
Technological limitations: Whether you love or hate spreadsheets, running and tracking sourcing events using static tools and technology, creates slow, inefficient processes, especially as sourcing becomes more complex.

What are some examples of how organizations have used strategic sourcing to drive collaboration and efficiency?

The e-book provides several examples of how organizations have used strategic sourcing effectively. One example is a very large chemical manufacturer that optimized their sourcing for all ocean, bulk, truckload, and LTL (Less Than Truckload) transport while managing risk from volatility in the transportation supply due to fuel costs, driver shortages, and weather-based emergencies. In doing so, they were able to automate the process of analyzing thousands of data points and hundreds of suppliers based on capacity, lead time, performance, and cost, while minimizing risk in transportation due to uncontrollable factors. This led the company to realize 13% savings from this one initiative.

Another example is a large building materials manufacturer that used strategic sourcing to address bottlenecks in running complex tenders that initially resulted in missed savings opportunities and put the company at risk for missed customer deliveries. The company elevated its sourcing processes to improve risk and savings controls while facilitating supplier management and rebates. This resulted in 22% savings on both direct and indirect tenders worth millions of Euros. Part of these savings also resulted in sustainability wins: the company replaced old lighting in production plants with LEDs, and started buying power from power purchasing agreements with renewable sources.