Organising procurement across multiple levels of any organisation can be a real challenge, particularly when you have fluctuating budgets and varying demands across your organisation to contend with. To help you keep on top of costs, we’ve put together our top 5 tips for maximising savings when it comes to procurement:
Alter Your Order and Purchasing Patterns
It’s always worth taking the time to look at your purchasing patterns with suppliers to see where savings can be made. It may be the case that you’re using two different suppliers for two different purchases, where one supplier could do both; potentially at a reduced rate to reflect the increased order size. It may also be financially beneficial to look at ordering slightly larger amounts of any given product less frequently if viable, as suppliers will often offer reduced rates for larger single orders.
Reduce Your Deliveries
On a similar note, it’s always worth looking at how deliveries can be consolidated to reduce cost. When working with the same supplier, see if you can reduce the number of separate deliveries you’re receiving by grouping your orders into one single delivery wherever possible; reducing cost and documentation. Many suppliers will also offer reduced-cost ‘eco’ delivery slots at times of the day/week when they’re most likely to be in your area.
Review Your Requirements
Keeping on top of stock levels is vital to ensure you keep costs down when it comes to procurement. In simple terms, if you aren’t getting through your orders each time, you’re wasting money on unnecessary product and storage costs. Review your orders every time, looking at how much you get through, how long each order lasts and how frequently you need to make purchases as a result. Keeping a regular eye on things will help you see where savings can be made, reducing wastage and saving you money in turn.
Speed Up and Simplify Procurement Online
Using online procurement auction portals like CF Source can not only help to drastically reduce the time taken on procurement across your business but can drive costs down as suppliers compete for your business. Not only does our e-sourcing solution allow you to standardise your procurement processes, making multi-team collaboration as easy as possible, but e-sourcing events enable you to quickly put together procurement tenders to send out to potential suppliers, with quotes then fed back to you in real-time. From here, you’re able to directly compare quotes, easily seeing which supplier offers you the best rate according to your needs.
Monitor Supplier Performance
Digitising your procurement processes gives you instant access to a wide range of supplier performance data which you can then use to your advantage when it comes to cost-cutting. Procurement analysis software, like our own CF Analytics, enables you to keep on top of everything – from how well your suppliers are servicing each of your procurement contracts, to areas where you could save money – enabling you to minimise risk and reduce costs wherever possible.
Want to find out more about how Curtis Fitch can help you reduce your online procurement costs? Get in touch!