I hope that you have enjoyed the article “Office Supplies Sourcing Secrets” as well as the accompanying podcast.

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That podcast really brought out a lot of not-so-common-knowledge type of information. I think that there are a lot of sourcing professionals who learned about the various pitfalls the hard way. I hope that I have saved you from those hard lessons!

One great piece of advice that didn’t make it into the article was David Clevenger’s suggestion that sourcing professionals work with suppliers collaboratively to improve the most important metric: spending less on office supplies on an aggregate, annual basis. There can be a lot of temptation to get caught up in the details, but with this focus and a cooperative supplier, I believe that a sourcing department can achieve significant and, more importantly, sustainable savings.