Procurement professionals everywhere know that Global Sourcing is a buzzword/concept in our business these days and has been for the last few years.
We all know about leveraging worldwide spend for buying power in negotiations and finding international vendors that can service worldwide accounts. Implementation gets a fairly large amount of attention. It's fun for execs to fly to the outlying locations and give speeches about how all purchasing functions will be unified at a central location.
What is less talked about it is how is all going to be managed on an ongoing basis.
Key tips include:
- Communications, - A newsletter for anyone involved in the Purchasing process should be written and distributed on a regular, consistent basis. It may be the only means of communications with some key users. They can't do the right thing procurement-wise if they don't what the right thing is!
- Decision-making Power - It must be established (and enforced) right from the beginning where the final word rests for how things will be done. Wavering on this point will create anarchy and quickly have the spend situation uncontrollable like it was before the initiative.
- Tracking (software) - The only way you will know if all users are following rules will be to track all spend and monitor for contract compliance.
Please share any other tips you have for managing Global Sourcing.
Also, check out the Procuremement & Global Sourcing 2006 Conference sponsored by the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals.
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