7-Step Strategic Sourcing Process: Improve your sourcing process

What is strategic sourcing?

Strategic sourcing, a pivotal aspect of standard end-to-end procurement practices, encompasses a multifaceted approach to procurement teams, costs, risks, product quality, service quality, and supplier risk management. This process involves internal collaboration with stakeholders and suppliers, leveraging data-driven insights to analyze spend, usage patterns, and supplier performance across various spend categories. It enables organizations to identify supply risks, such as market fluctuations or supplier instability, and develop a cohesive plan to mitigate them effectively.

• With a focus on continuous evaluation and improvement, strategic sourcing aligns purchasing power with the overall value proposition, fostering a diverse and resilient supply base. By implementing the 7-step vendor management process, as advocated by A.T. Kearney, businesses can systematically assess supplier capabilities, and technology layout, and detail supplier performance against predefined criteria such as location, type, grade, and service level agreements.
• Furthermore, strategic sourcing involves evaluating feasible sources for raw materials, optimizing processes, and adapting to changes in the market landscape. Through strategic sourcing, organizations can enhance their competitiveness by optimizing costs, improving product and service quality, and ensuring a reliable supply chain.
• Also, you can determine ways to reduce supply chain costs and manage supply risks.  Therefore, it becomes crucial for you to improve the strategic sourcing process. To help you establish a good strategic sourcing methodology and reap the benefits of the strategic sourcing process, the experts at SpendEdge have highlighted the key steps involved in improving the strategic sourcing process.

Process of strategic sourcing?

Strategic sourcing is a systematic process that involves several key steps to optimize procurement practices and achieve the company’s aim of cost-effectiveness, quality assurance, and risk mitigation while fostering strategic partnerships with suppliers. The process typically begins with:

1. Identify Company Needs: Begin by identifying the company’s procurement needs and requirements, considering factors like cost-effectiveness, quality assurance, and risk mitigation.
2. Request for Information (RFI): Draft an RFI document to gather information from potential suppliers regarding their capabilities, offerings, and alignment with the company’s needs.
3. Request for Quotation/Proposal (RFQ/RFP): Issue RFQ or RFP documents to solicit bids from qualified suppliers, outlining minimum requirements, selection criteria, and strategic objectives.
4. Supplier Evaluation: Evaluate supplier proposals based on criteria such as product quality, pricing, delivery capabilities, regulatory compliance, and alignment with company strategy.
5. Further Evaluation: Invite selected suppliers for further evaluation, which may include direct purchase negotiations, discussions on strategic partnerships, or collaborative initiatives.
6. Negotiations: Conduct negotiations with suppliers on pricing, terms, and conditions to ensure maximum value and compliance with standards. Explore value-added services or solutions during negotiations.
7. Final Decision: Finalize the decision and place orders with selected suppliers based on negotiated terms and conditions.
8. Supplier Performance Monitoring: Monitor supplier performance throughout the procurement process, tracking metrics like on-time deliveries, product quality, and returns using historical data and performance metrics.
9. Relationship Building: Emphasize building strong relationships with suppliers to foster collaboration, optimize costs, ensure timely delivery, and drive continuous improvement in supply chain efficiency.
10. Continuous Improvement: Continuously review and improve sourcing processes to enhance overall efficiency and effectiveness while maintaining compliance with industry standards and regulations.

By following this strategic sourcing process, companies can effectively optimize procurement practices, mitigate risks, and achieve their procurement objectives while building strong supplier relationships and ensuring compliance.

7 Steps of Strategic Sourcing Process

Step 1: Identify spend areas

Identifying spend areas is a key step in improving the strategic sourcing process. This is done at the CEO, CFO, or CPO level and involves selecting areas of spend that could produce cost reductions or process improvements.

Critical to this step is prioritizing the various spend areas based on the objectives of the company. Collect data about your company, analyze the data, and build the framework you’ll need to divide the entire supply chain into various categories. This will help you categorize spend and understand where the spend is taking place.

Want to know how an improved strategic sourcing process can help you analyze spend areas and identify cost reduction opportunities? To access our solution portfolio for free.

Step 2: Perform Supply Market Analysis

Begin your supplier market research to find relevant suppliers and identify the ones that can be beneficial for your organization. The process involves supplier market analysis, demand analysis, supplier selections, and category risk analysis. 

Collect data for the supplier base that can supply different categories. Go beyond your existing customers and consolidate supplier data. Analyze the spend in different categories and compare your spend to the supplier revenue. This will help you understand how valuable you can be to the supplier.

Next, conduct supplier interviews to select suppliers. Send RFI to potential suppliers and compare it with costs you are paying to your current suppliers. This will help you understand whether its wise enough to continue with current suppliers or not. Finish the step by performing a category risk assessment to determine if new suppliers are worth the risk or not.

Step 3: Analyze your current sourcing process  

Engage with stakeholders to gain detailed insights regarding products used by suppliers. Know why they are using certain products compared to cheaper alternatives and find ways to cut costs without comprising the quality. Identify similar or alternative components to benchmark against your current ones and make the strategic sourcing process efficient. Evaluate potential suppliers against the current one and calculate the hidden costs associated with new suppliers. Even if you don’t intend to source from overseas, benchmark suppliers and products on the global level so you can have a global point of view.

Step 4: Develop a strategic sourcing strategy

Once, you have a clear idea of spend areas and supply market, develop a robust strategy to determine ways to minimize costs and risks. But before that, understand current suppliers’ capabilities and the future requirements for the commodity or service from the business units. This will help you to identify and establish timelines and milestones as a road map to accomplishing the objectives. Additionally, such strategies will negotiate the best possible deal with suppliers you choose for the organization.

Step 5: Supplier selection process

After self-evaluating the suppliers, send an RFI or an RFP to gain relevant insights.  Define your requirements, and detailed questions to obtain a comprehensive overview of the product, processes continuous improvement policies, and costs. Once you get the questionnaire back from potential suppliers, develop the supplier portfolio and a score. This will help you benchmark scores against your requirements, determine the minimum score required by the supplier to qualify, and improve the strategic sourcing process.

Step 6: Initiate RFQ Process

Since, you have shortlisted qualified companies who possess the potential to meet your needs, challenge your existing supplier by sending a request for quotation (RFQ). This will add an element of competition and help you get the best value in terms of cost savings. Prepare documents for each vendor, include a description of your company, the project, and background information and attach terms and conditions to be followed while making a bid. This will help you spend less time in negotiation, keep the process transparent and sign contracts at the best prices.

Developing a supplier portfolio is an important part of the strategic sourcing process. Request to start your free trial now!

Step 7: Maintain supplier relationships

Probably this is one of the most ignored aspects of the strategic sourcing process. Companies fail to gain substantial value from their vendors after going through such a laborious process of vendor selection.

Establishing an effective supplier relationship management program will enable you to realize savings and improvements that were targeted during the early strategic sourcing process. Implement new ideas or processes, develop continuous improvement cost drivers with the selected supplier(s), and refine the scorecards to keep the momentum going. Cost-effective

---

How SpendEdge help organisations with strategic procurement?

SpendEdge assists organizations with strategic procurement through a comprehensive suite of services aimed at optimizing sourcing practices and driving value across the supply chain. Utilizing advanced analytics and industry expertise, SpendEdge provides the following support:

1. Market Intelligence: Offers in-depth market research and analysis to identify key market trends, supplier landscapes, and cost-saving opportunities, enabling organizations to make informed procurement decisions.
2. Supplier Identification and Evaluation: Utilizes rigorous supplier vetting processes to identify and assess potential suppliers based on criteria such as quality, reliability, pricing, and sustainability, ensuring the selection of strategic partners aligned with organizational objectives.
3. Strategic Sourcing Strategies: Develops tailored strategic sourcing strategies focused on achieving cost-effectiveness, quality assurance, and risk mitigation while fostering long-term supplier relationships and driving innovation.
4. Negotiation Support: Provides negotiation support to optimize supplier contracts, pricing, terms, and conditions, leveraging market insights and industry benchmarks to secure favorable agreements and maximize value for organizations.
5. Supplier Relationship Management (SRM): Offers SRM solutions to enhance collaboration, communication, and performance tracking with suppliers, driving continuous improvement and value creation throughout the procurement process.
6. Risk Management: Identifies and mitigates supply chain risks through proactive risk assessment, scenario planning, and contingency strategies, ensuring business continuity and resilience in the face of disruptions.
7. Compliance and Regulatory Support: Assists organizations in navigating complex regulatory landscapes and ensuring compliance with industry standards, regulations, and ethical sourcing practices, mitigating legal and reputational risks.
8. Continuous Improvement: Facilitates continuous improvement initiatives through data-driven insights, performance monitoring, and benchmarking, driving efficiency, innovation, and cost optimization across the procurement function.

By leveraging SpendEdge’s expertise and resources, organizations can enhance their strategic procurement capabilities, optimize sourcing practices, and achieve their procurement objectives while driving sustainable value and competitive advantage in the marketplace.

For more information