Procurement Market Intelligence: How a Pharmaceutical Company Achieved Cost Savings on Categories Using Plastic Polymers

The Business Challenge

A well-known pharmaceutical company that markets its products to healthcare practitioners, hospitals, and managed care providers in over 15 countries was facing predicaments in optimizing business process results. Their inability to track the supply market conditions was increasing the turnaround time for the Purchase Requisition (PR) to Purchase Order (PO) process. The lack of metric visibility, proper control mechanisms, and cultural barriers was restricting global standardization and scalability of business operations. The inefficient mechanisms were further resulting in excessive costs for the company.

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Solutions Offered

In partnership with the client, the procurement specialists at SpendEdge conducted a detailed analysis of the supply market from the perspective of the pharmaceutical company and offered them with in-depth procurement market intelligence insights. They formulated effective strategies for achieving sourcing and procurement excellence, which helped the client to maximize its ROI. This substantially reduced the time spent on analysis and curating information and enabled them to focus on strategic sourcing and cost reduction opportunities.

A centralized and standardized transactional procurement process was introduced to create strategic and tactical functions. Under the new scheme of things, strategic activities were performed to eliminate delivery disruptions and reduction in payment disputes. Unproductive and inefficient processes were further identified across sites to measure the effectiveness of service delivery results. The strategic group was made responsible for category management across sites to proactively leverage global volume and monitor industry trends.

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Key Findings

Reduced Cycle Time

The standardized processes refined the Purchase Requisition (PR) to Purchase Order (PO) process and reduced the cycle time to 0.5 days from 2 business days. The metrics implemented improved the visibility of productivity and service levels within three months. Also, the procurement market intelligence solution helped consolidated major suppliers in the supply market who can provide end-to-end service and meet their changing demands.

Achieved Cost Savings

The procurement market intelligence solutions rendered by experts further helped the client to realize cost savings on categories which predominantly use plastic polymers (as the prices of polymers declined from their level in 2017-18). They developed a robust contract compliance team and established a contract having provisions for raw material price adjustments to deal with market fluctuations.

How Procurement Market Intelligence Solutions Help Companies?

Procurement market intelligence solutions help gather and analyze the information relevant to a company’s supply markets and improve the procurement process. They help classify critical-to-quality factors that influence the buying behavior and leverage and identify the costs associated with energy, overhead, materials, labor, transportation, profit, and other cost components. Also, procurement market intelligence solutions help reduce risks, increase savings, and improve decision-making capabilities for companies.

Leveraging procurement market intelligence solutions can offer numerous benefits for businesses. Get in touch with our experts and know how our procurement services can help you leverage the benefits of procurement market intelligence solutions.

How Category Market Intelligence Services Helped a Retail Company to Increase Sales by 150% – A SpendEdge’s Success Story

The Business Challenge

The client – a developing online fashion retail company – was facing predicaments in selling their products. They were finding it hard to position their products in such a way that they can compete with the leading online retail channels in the international market. This compelled them to assess the global market dynamics and drivers that were impacting market trends. They also wanted to develop a market research report that can offer insights into the current situation in the retail market. Moreover, they were looking forward to analyzing competitors’ category strategies to compete with top-level companies in the industry.

Is your business revenue dwindling due to heavy market competition? Get in touch with our experts and know how our category market intelligence services can help you to analyze the global market trends and devise effective marketing strategies.

Solutions Offered

To help the retail e-commerce company devise effective marketing strategies that can tap the potential growth opportunities, the category market intelligence experts at SpendEdge tailored a comprehensive market research methodology. The extensive market research methodology included primary and secondary research coupled with meticulous qualitative and quantitative data collection techniques.

With the aid of the category market intelligence report, the client was able to analyze the performance of the market in a span of two weeks and obtain detailed insights into the latest trends and developments that were going to define the global market. By targeting the online consumers’ niche, the ecommerce company created an exclusive range of fashion products and achieved a 150% hike in sales after implementing the category market intelligence solutions. Furthermore, our experts offered a category market intelligence report that provided them with the overview of the competitor companies in the international market and the procurement best practices that they can follow. This helped the client to gain buyer insights, analyze risks and understand problems pertaining to suppliers.

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Key Findings

The category market intelligence solutions helped the client to gain accurate buyer insights and improve their sales by 150%. The analysis of the competitors’ category strategies guided the company to formulate effective marketing strategies that can maintain the sales by managing key risks in the supply chain.

What Is the Importance of Category Market Intelligence Solutions?

The category market intelligence solutions help companies to determine market size related to their products and gain detailed insights into the latest trends and developments. Additionally, it prepares companies to mitigate risks such as financially unstable vendors, fluctuations in commodity prices, regulatory change implications, and upstream supply chain interruptions in procurement.

Assessing market dynamics and predicting market sizing requires a great deal of expertise. Request a free demo and know how our experts can assist your company with effective category market intelligence solutions.

Procurement Intelligence Solutions for a Retail Company – A SpendEdge Success Story

Procurement Intelligence Solution Transforms Finance Operations and Enhances Supply Management

About the Client

The client is an American multinational retail-clothing firm. With over 500+ stores, the company employs around 57,000 people globally.

The Business Challenge

With changing consumer behavior and technological innovations, retailers across the globe are uncovering new ways to sustain from the disruption. Moreover, retail brands are coping with a long-term uptrend in commodity and other raw materials input prices, and rapidly shifting global supply chain. These mounting global supply chain complexity with retail markets is forcing retail companies to be more agile and react faster than other players in the market. This is where procurement intelligence comes into play. In today’s competitive market scenario, procurement intelligence is the key to establishing long-term strategic sourcing and supply management plans.

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How Market Intelligence Can Dramatically Boost Your Supply Chain

The supply chain in modern companies is increasingly complex and dynamic in nature. From suppliers and industries to raw materials and commodities, there have been steady changes taking place across the supply chain of new age companies. Furthermore, the increasing uncertainty in the economic markets are forcing organizations to closely monitor market conditions and respond appropriately through improved supply chain strategies.

Traditional ERP systems are undoubtedly highly useful management tools, but they are mostly blind to external data. Their “inside-out” approach can leave companies inadequately equipped when planning and executing competitive supply chain strategies. However, with the advent of new market intelligence tools can resolve this problem. With the help of supply market intelligence, ERP systems can now incorporate real-time insights on suppliers, customers, and competitors, thus creating a perspective to reduce risk and create a competitive advantage. Here are just five benefits companies can realize with a market intelligence intelligence-driven supply chain.

Improved supply chain strategies

It is vital to take into consideration the impact of potential events before undertaking supply chain planning. For instance, factors such as a sudden increase in demand, or in the event of any supplier undergoing a catastrophic event, companies must be able to be prepared to handle such situations. Market intelligence provides early warning signals and unique insights into events that are likely to occur. Furthermore, it can also help in assessing alternative suppliers and approaches. This prepares companies to handle unforeseen contingencies better.

Competitive advantage

Competitive advantage often comes to companies who are more agile, nimbler, and react faster when compared to their peers in the market. In fact, a quick reaction to unforeseen disruptions is the route for modern companies to gain a competitive advantage. For instance, if a particular supplier is struggling to meet the company’s demand, they can quickly move to an alternative. Or, if a key component may be difficult to procure, companies can lock up the supply before the competitor does. Market intelligence via real-time alerts is key to achieve this as it gives faster insights for companies to be prepared for contingencies in the future.

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Developing Better Sourcing Strategies to Support the Overall Business Requirements in the Manufacturing Sector – A Supply Market Intelligence Engagement

Top Five Benefits of Adding Market Intelligence to Your Supply Chain

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Supply Market Intelligence Engagement: How an Organic Food Store Achieved an Annual Savings of $15 Million

Organic Food Market Analysis

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Supply Market Intelligence Helps a Leading Frozen Food Manufacturer to Identify and Assess Factors Affecting Market Volatility – A Food Industry Engagement

Engagement Overview:

The client, a pioneer in the frozen food market wanted to identify and assess factors affecting market volatility. The client wanted to study the market forces and implement a comparative analysis of the major players in the frozen food market. Hence they approached SpendEdge to help them leverage its strong expertise in supply market intelligence. Also, the client wanted to address challenges arising due to their inability to study the supply market.

About the Client:

One of the world’s largest frozen food company that manufactures and supplies frozen food products to regions across the globe.

Business Challenge:

The increasing uncertainty in the global frozen food market is the compelling factor that is forcing frozen food companies to closely monitors market fluctuations and adopt precise supply chain strategies to prevent supply chain disruptions. As leading frozen food companies devise precise procurement strategies that enhance profit margins, they are increasingly discovering major shortfalls in market intelligence and other such capabilities that form the basis for devising effective procurement strategies.

The frozen food market client was facing similar challenges, which compelled them to leverage supply market intelligence to make precise decisions related to business functions, profit objectives, budgets, and pricing strategies.

How did SpendEdge Help the Client?

The supply market intelligence experts at SpendEdge joined hands with the frozen food market client to address market fluctuations and develop deep market intelligence aimed at offering insights into core factors affecting the supply market including- market trends, regulatory changes, commodity pricing, and factors impacting global sourcing.

Our experts developed a comprehensive approach that responds to the long-term market trends while supporting their corporate strategies. The development process was split into the following three phases:

Step 1: Development of a commodity profile

This step is a pre-requisite for analyzing the supply market to gain a better understanding of the supply market scenario. By doing so players in the frozen food market segment will be able to gain clearer insights on the products being examined along with the scope of the engagement.
Our supply market intelligence experts began with a detailed analysis of supply market data to better understand the market scenario and develop a commodity profile. This involved extensive interviews with market leaders to analyze their business models. This enabled the frozen food market client to identify and classify all the potential suppliers that are capable of meeting their requirements.

Step 2: Evaluation of market leaders and their procurement strategies

An external review of the supply market enabled the frozen food market client to identify major players in the segment. A detailed supply market review helped them uncover procurement best practices and other procurement strategies adopted by market leaders. This enabled the client to compare their procurement strategies with that of the industry’s best and make necessary changes to existing strategies.

Step 3: A strategic three-step supply market intelligence-based approach to identify market trends and industry forces

The strategic three-step supply market intelligence approach offered detailed insights into supply and demand fluctuations in the frozen food market. Such an approach enabled the client to effectively manage the dynamism of the value chain by minimizing the time dedicated to information gathering and analysis.

Key questions answered in this supply market intelligence engagement include:

Benefits of the Engagement:

With the help of SpendEdge’s supply market intelligence solutions, the frozen food market client was able to analyze the global supply market scenario and make holistic and unbiased business decisions. The fact that they leveraged supply market intelligence throughout their procurement functions turned out to be a top differentiator in the company’s performance.

Importance of supply market intelligence in the frozen food market

It is a well-known fact that intelligence can only be gleaned from relevant timely information on market developments and fluctuations. Without which the massive data influx can result in major challenges for players in the frozen food market, given the enormous amounts of data available today. The generic nature of data makes it necessary for procurement officials to weed out outdated and irrelevant data to obtain the required information.

Since business operations are severely affected by market volatility, it is essential for frozen food companies to leverage intelligence in decision making. Moreover, the need for real-time market information on indirect spend categories and market dynamics is what is compelling leading frozen food companies to devise appropriate strategies to gain a competitive edge. To sustain a competitive advantage by doing so leading frozen food market players are now approaching SpendEdge to leverage its procurement expertise to thrive in a complicated market.

Our Findings:

This supply market intelligence engagement helps to visualize the importance of leveraging intelligence in procurement decision making. Also, the strategic use of supply market intelligence paves the way for organizations to confront the accelerating procurement challenges.

If your organization is on the lookout for an objective way to reduce procurement related costs, we’re here to help. Wait no more! Go ahead and get in touch with our strategic sourcing experts to develop custom configured engagement models and procurement research deliverables.

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