As more and more companies have found out over the past few years, it takes more than a well-structured reverse auction to cut costs, especially during a recession. If your organization is not yet a next level supply management organization, here are a few tips to get you on your way.

Understand the Need
The current market environment is to do more, and grow more, but spend less. It’s an economic paradox, but it’s the reality for the time being. As a result, any company that fails to achieve continual cost reductions might find themselves the next victim of the jobless recovery.

Accept the Reality
Despite what South Park might suggest, it is not possible for an entire company to bury its head in the sand to get through some trying times. Nor is it possible to ignore the need for continual cost reductions even if there are no obvious “low hanging fruit” opportunities left to pick.

Negotiation is Not Enough
The days of yelling, table banging, and threatening to take the business elsewhere are long gone. Margins are tight across the board and no supplier is going to risk survival for a customer who may, or may not, be around next year. A moden organization needs a number of tools at their disposal, including good spend analysis and e-Negotiation solutions.

Make The Business Case (to be a Technolgy Ace)
Given the do more but spend less mantra, the C-Suite will probably want Procurement to get by with whatever tools they have now, even if those tools aren’t more powerful than a pencil, paper, and abacus. Fortunately, numerous studies exist documenting the ROI of Spend Analysis and Decision Optimization solutions that prove that these two solutions, on average, each deliver a year-over-year return of over 10% (and are the only e-Sourcing solutions that fall in that category). Thus, if Procurement focusses on Spend Analysis (to identify its most profitable opportunities in the short-term and the long-term) and an e-Negotiation suite that contains Decision Optimization (in addition to modern RFx and e-Auction technology), it has a lot of ammunition.

Focus on Erosion of Savings
Generally, 40% (or more) of negotiated savings in an average organization are never realized due to maverick spending and non-compliance on the part of the supplier. Implement e-Procurement policies and solutions that can ( a) prevent the approval of POs to non-contracted suppliers without appropriate executive sign-off and ( b) automatically m-way match each invoice to goods receipts and purchase orders (verified to be at contracted rates) and prevent payments until all items have been delivered and billed at contracted rates. While not perfect, as there will always be emergencies that require off-contract spend, such a solution will get an average organization from 60% to 90% compliance, and if the negotiated savings was 10%, increase implemented savings by 50%, which is a substantial amount on a multi-million category.

Work as an Interdisciplinary Team
It’s important to work with the joint S&OP team to insure negotiations, and buys, are based on good forecasts and with engineering to not only make sure the raw materials and component parts but to help them, during NPD, select alternate sources of supply that can reduce costs from step one.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate
Procurement requirements change everyday, and if the organization is buying last year’s materials on last year’s forecasts, one can be sure that opportunities for savings are lost.