One of the many hats that small to mid sized business owners have to wear, often for extended periods of time, is the role of Chief Purchasing Officer. The thing is, you're busy with the actual day to day running of your company. This means, almost by definition, that you're probably not staying abreast of all the tech advances in every field of technology you may employ in your business. Fortunately, this too, is a service that can be outsourced, and there are a number of excellent companies that specialize in procurement.
What A Procurement Partner Can Do For You
There are four major areas that a procurement partner can assist you with, and a number of lesser things that may or may not be of import to you. We'll outline each of these below, and you can judge for yourself if these are services that would be a valuable addition to your company.
Purchase Planning
Before you can get a firm handle on exactly what you're going to buy, you've first got to understand exactly what it is you need, or will need in the fairly immediate future. Hand in hand with that, you've got to get a handle on the full range of possibilities that could meet your needs, then start grading them, most helpful to least, to arrive at a final decision that gets the job done without busting your budget. As you might guess, there's quite a lot of work and research that goes into that. Having a dedicated team that stays on top of all the latest trends is invaluable, and saves you from making an informed guess about what you need, which could result in an incorrect pairing between need and function, costing you both time and money.
Acquisition
Once you've actually settled on a basket of tech to acquire, the next step is finding the right suppliers for that tech. The right supplier might not always be the lowest cost producer of the goods you're looking for. Service, reliability and reputation all matter too, and again, a purchasing partner is well positioned to steer you away from companies that might look good on paper, but that have a reputation for not being there when it matters.
Property Management
Once you've acquired your tech, your procurement partner is again well positioned to help you manage and track it. This extends not only to the physical management of the goods themselves, but also to working with accounting to make certain that you're getting full credit for depreciation of the new assets.
Management of Supplier Relations
This can be a huge headache, and probably one that you'll be happy to hand off to someone else. It comes with the added advantage that your procurement partner likely already has a standing relationship with at least some of your providers. While they may be an unknown quantity to you, you're getting the benefits of a standing relationship in many cases.
In addition to these, if you have a personal preference toward, say, buying green, or buying only from high quality small vendors, or other related priorities that might not be critical in a strategic sense, but are still important to you, a good procurement partner can accommodate those preferences, weaving them into the services they provide for you.
All told then, that amounts to fewer headaches for you and a smoother acquisition path.
