Ultimately no two organisations are the same and the quick win opportunities will depend to some extent upon your maturity within your procurement processes and progress made to date. However, our experience suggests that many organisations have opportunities to drive significant savings by simply putting in place basic supplier engagement principles.

The four ideas outlined below provide most organisations with tangible benefits within a short timeframe;

1. implement a central supplier directory – this provides the informational foundation to improve virtually every procurement activity. Besides providing a single view of all suppliers, it enables you to;

• eliminate redundant suppliers and processes
• improve procurement and finance productivity
• enable better supplier categorisation and spend analysis
• deliver savings by removing duplications

2. Strengthen supplier qualification and contract review processes – a good procurement system will support streamlined processes that can quickly;

• identify existing supplier risk so steps can be taken to mitigate it
• reduce risk and associated costs going forward
• automate the supplier review process

3. Perform a supplier rationalisation process and establish corporate contracts – Once you have a central database of suppliers, the logical next steps is to strip out duplication. Spreading your spend across too many suppliers dilutes your buying power, whilst maintaining just one relationship may increase risk of failure. A supplier rationalisation process will enable you to;

• reduce the overall cost of purchased goods and services by negotiating better value
• lock in longer term savings through corporate contracts with preferred suppliers
• reduce the risk of relaiance on just one supplier

4. Deploy a supplier portal – this provides significant savings in administration costs and enables streamlined processes to;

• automate the upfront supplier evaluation
• reduce supplier onboarding effort
• reduce sourcing effort
• reduce purchase ledger activities

Overall, these are just some of the ways that you can deliver very short term benefits and realise immediate financial impact on your bottom line.