Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. This week, I\u2019ll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled \u201cTen Steps to Lower Procurement Costs in Life Sciences\u201d from SciQuest and Archstone Consulting.<\/p>\n
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While the whitepaper purports to be focused on the life sciences industry \u2013 one of SciQuest\u2019s target markets \u2013 the core advice in this whitepaper is really applicable to procurement in any industry. While the whitepaper starts off discussing the economy\u2019s impact on the life sciences industry and introduces strategic procurement, the whitepaper is built around those 10 steps to lower procurement costs.<\/p>\n
I won\u2019t steal the whitepaper\u2019s thunder and reveal all 10, but I will point out some of the more powerful tips, such as:<\/p>\n
1. Mine Value From Segmentation: \u201cIdentify categories (or sub-categories) where there has been significant market change and where new opportunities for cost savings may exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
3. Eliminate Sacred Cows: \u201cIncrease spend under management by obtaining a commitment from senior management to pursue \u2018sacred cow\u2019 categories and to manage other categories that are currently outside of procurement\u2019s responsibility.\u201d<\/p>\n
4. Build-in Best Practices: \u201cWith resource constraints, it\u2019s not uncommon for an organization to still have purchasing practices in use that were created 5, 10, even 15 years ago. Thoroughly review your procurement processes to ensure they are still relevant.\u201d<\/p>\n
7. Mitigate Supplier Risk: \u201cEnsure that you have back-up suppliers for critical commodities; source alternate suppliers for all categories that have the potential to take on a more strategic role in your supply chain; ask for an audited bill of health; [and] seek information from third-party organizations, such as Dun & Bradstreet, that provide viability reports.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you find these suggestions to be stimulating, you should get your hands on your own copy of the whitepaper from SciQuest\u2019s Web site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Welcome back to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4013,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n