Every year Grosvenor conducts a research study focusing on a specific area of procurement practice. These insights are used to inform our industry by aggregating real world experiences from Australian organisations and turn them into strategies that allow us to share knowledge and drive change within our own organisations.
Our 2018 procurement study “Eight savings myths debunked” was expected to stir the pot. It’s easy to allow assumptions and preconceived ideas about finding cost savings to influence where to look and what to expect.
Prioritising your procurement initiatives would be a lot easier if indicators existed that helped you determine where your most likely source of savings is going to come from.
In my last article, Is there a pot of gold hidden in your procurement spend?, I mentioned that one of the goals of our 2018 Procurement Study was to unlock a set of indicators that could be used to identify which categories, supplier and contracts are likely to yield the greatest opportunities to reduce spend.
On average procurement teams can gain an extra 29% performance from their suppliers with some simple changes. Our 2017 research study uncovered what suppliers would like to (but often can't) say to buyers to help them turn this around.
With spend in supply chains representing an average of 60% of an organisation’s budget, procurement strategy and processes have a profound ability to affect the social, environmental and economic sustainability of business at large. The power of procurement to contribute, both positively and negatively, to sustainable objectives has never been so widely recognised.
It’s been called a lot of things: strategic procurement, Category Management, strategic commissioning and customer centric procurement. What it really should be called is “good procurement practice”.
If you’re still doing things the old way - seeing your organisation as a series of silos - you’re missing out on plenty of opportunities to become a Savings Champion. Yes, the new procurement officer is an influencer, someone who is collaborative and makes use of all the tools.
Levers provide you with efficiencies that help move otherwise impossible loads with ease. As a user of these levers, it's important to be aware of what levers exist and when to use the right lever at the right time. You’d never use a crowbar, for example, to lift the lid on the Milo tin, just like you’d never try to shift that pile of bricks with a pair of tweezers.
In my last article, Is there a pot of gold hidden in your procurement spend?, I mentioned that one of the goals of our 2018 Procurement Study was to unlock a set of indicators that could be used to identify which categories, supplier and contracts are likely to yield the greatest opportunities to reduce spend.
Every year Grosvenor conducts a research study focusing on a specific area of procurement practice. These insights are used to inform our industry by aggregating real world experiences from Australian organisations and turn them into strategies that allow us to share knowledge and drive change within our own organisations.
When we think of generating savings, many of us automatically think of simply paying less for goods and services: whether we’re talking about tenders, volume aggregation or minimising contract leakage, this tried and tested method of using spending power to beat down prices has delivered significant savings over the years.
Grosvenor benchmarked 31 organisations across Australia and internationally to understand what controls were in place to address the risk of modern slavery within their supply chains. Through our research in June 2018, we discovered what was considered best practice and what organisations across the country can be doing now to address modern slavery risks within their supply chains.
We have gut feeling about plenty of things and maybe we think we know what works when it comes to incentivising behaviour. That’s because we know how we respond to sticks and carrots. But maybe not everyone responds as we do. Maybe different situations call for different approaches.
It never ceases to amaze me how important the simple things like returning a phone call or responding to email are to successful buyer / seller relationships. Funny how we expect a supplier to respond and even fall over themselves when we need them. But do we always show the same respect back? Is it ok not to just because we are the ones handing over the cash?
With their focus on keeping supplier costs down, Australasian Chief Procurement Officers are used to having their attention trained on the external market: but did you know you can almost double your savings by turning your attention inside the organisation too?
A recurring theme for many procurement staff is the erosion over time of the actual performance of their service contracts. Why is it that, despite the increasing use of robust tools and templates and the increasing proficiency of procurement staff, purchasers continue to feel dissatisfied with their contracts?
A 2014 Australasian study has found that public sector organisations have at least twice as many procurement staff as private sector organisations. It is probably easy to surmise that this is a consequence of the high accountability, probity and compliance expectations of government. In effect, procurement processes in the public sector are more involved than in the private sector.
Services have become a significant part of Australia’s economy. However, businesses are not always sure how to align their purchasing function with this trend. This whitepaper explores differences between physical goods and services and how these influence the procurement function.
Much has been written about the relationship between leadership and staff performance. There’s no doubt that better leaders also produce better business outcomes. Yet, this kind of thinking is usually limited to staff management. It does not extend to the positive impact leadership might have on the performance of suppliers.
Anyone who’s ever come into contact with a toddler will know that for most of us negotiation skills are learnt early. Unlike a toddler, adult negotiators understand that there are two sides to any negotiation and both negotiators want to have their needs met. Here’s how to negotiate the best outcomes for your contract, while keeping your supplier relationships intact.
Organisations successful in managing supply chains understand the value of managing effective relationships with their suppliers. These organisations have a knack of building trust and confidence with their suppliers which leads to knowledge sharing and the identification of improvement opportunities.
In 2015, Grosvenor collaborated with PASA to survey hundreds of top procurement professionals in Australasia. Why? Because we wanted to identify the most effective savings tactics in use, and understand who was using them to the best effect. What we discovered might surprise you.
You may have heard the saying, ‘what gets measured gets done’. Use of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) is the main way supplier performance is measured and the main mechanism for driving supplier behaviour. Here’s some tips on how to develop and measure best practice KPIs to encourage ongoing performance and exceptional outcomes from your suppliers.
We studied 159 organisations, asking them about their most successful procurement initiative in the last 12 months and benefits achieved.
The research is in:
