supplier relationship management

Procurement

Reduce your Procurement Costs

Our procurement strategists take the pulse of purchasing within your organisation.

By looking at both proactive procurement – ongoing category management – and day-to-day transactional procurement, they are able to provide clarity on how you measure up against best practice and provide effective, proven methods that deliver improved practice and profitability.

ERA UK have been managing cost and supplier relationships – and delivering significant financial savings – on behalf of clients for twenty five years. During that time the world in which they operate has changed significantly.

Procurement itself has gone on a journey in that time – rebranded from ‘purchasing’ and beginning to gain a foothold as a strategic presence in some boardrooms. For some organisations though, the time and resource required for a strategic overhaul of the way in which goods and services are acquired simply isn’t there.

Our team offers a Procurement Capability Review that – with minimal intrusion – can give you a comprehensive view of how well your purchasing squares up to best practice. When an average 70% of turnover is spent within the supply chain, isn’t it time you optimised your supply relationships and deliver true value from your external resources?

Cost Areas Include

• Governance
• Policy
• Process
• Systems

Procurement Services

Taking in the way in which any organisations works is difficult. Each organisation has its own traditions, peculiarities and ways of doing this. Truly getting to grips with any organisations spending habits is time consuming and requires engagement with a range of stakeholders from multiple departments.

Our process takes all of this into account.

Any genuine wide ranging review within an organisation requires some hard work and should only be entered into when tangible rewards are possible.

Our procurement capability review looks at:

Governance: The overall control and direction of an organisations procurement function. Usually seen through organisational frameworks, policy and procedure.

Policy: A set of rules or guidelines that constitute a list of do’s and don’ts for procurement staff and non-procurement staff with responsibilities for purchasing anything.

Process: The means via which the policies are implemented. These processes usually vary widely between both departments buying and products sourced.

Systems: Can mean a couple of things; another word for processes or procedures, or can mean software designed to help with them.

Position: Looks at where procurement sits in the overall organisational structure. What is the internal attitude to procurement and / or purchasing from other departments? Is the team enabled to be change-makers?

People: What are the strengths, weaknesses and skillset of those currently involved in buying? How many are trained in procurement? How many are just given responsibility for buying through promotion without formal training?

Performance: Overall, how is the purchasing function measuring up to what ‘good’ looks like?

Metrics: What measures and checks and balances are in place? What Key Performance Indicators exist to manage and measure performance and drive improvement?

With potential outcome areas in:

Staff: We might make some recommendations around hiring to plug a skills gap. We’ll never tell you to fire anyone.

Procedures: New and improved ways of doing things – that will generate tangible efficiencies or savings – not just for the sake of it.

Training: It might be that we make recommendations around how staff may need to improve.

Process: We sometimes make necessary changes to processes in order to improve or streamline the way something is requisitioned or ordered.

Software: There may be – certainly for larger organisations – some benefits to be gained from investing in some technology.

Get in touch today to find out more about reducing your procurement costs.

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