Single Source Savings (also known as Vendor Consolidation) is a great way to quickly remove "soft costs" from your daily routine. It can also make you very unpopular at work!
Using a single source means that one vendor is going to lose business. Any of your colleagues who use the departing vendor are going to be upset and will not care to switch their business elsewhere.
It will be up to the Purchasing professional to convince his or her colleagues of the necessity and benefits of implementing the changes. I'll give you a good explanation of soft cost savings in the next post, which you can pass on as necessary. For now, let's focus on the transition and three things that will help you.
A) If the move is part of a corporate savings mandate, this is good. Employees may be feeling the pinch all around and your project will be folded in to the overall theme.
B) Bringing the new vendor in to meet the end users. Give them a chance to sell the users on the benefits of their company just as they sold the Purchasing Department. Also, this comfort and familiarity will be helpful later if questions or issues arise.
C) Of course, you are trying to improve efficiency, but don't change any processes just for the sake of a clean sweep. If there is no impact on the bottom line, then keep as many of the procedures the same as you can. You want to the transition from one vendor to another to be as seamless as possible.
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