As per this recent post over on SCMR that summarized new data released by APQC, companies that have adopted category management practices – managing product categories separately and customizing them according to specific customer needs – outperform others on a number of key supply chain metrics. Specifically:

• shorter supplier lead time –
  median lead time of 6 days compared to 28 days
• faster cycle time –
  median turnaround time of 8 hours compared to 72 hours
• higher productivity –
  199% more POs processed per FTE
• fewer FTEs required to order materials and services –
  companies without category management require 2.5 times as many FTEs to order materials and services and have less FTEs to focus on more strategic endeavours

So, if your organization is not already managing on a category basis, maybe it’s time to do so for key categories.