A New Procurement Model for a New Era [Downloadable eBook]

In a time of disruption, leaders are looking to chart an easier path for their corporate spend strategy.

The world of asset management is inarguably competitive. For most firms, growth and success rely on thinking ahead. That’s hard to focus on when you spend a significant portion of operational attention just trying to manage today’s changing market dynamics, increasing vendor sprawl and external prices that just seem to keep. going. up. 

Which is why many mid-market leaders are embracing a now-emerging model of procurement outsourcing: Procurement-as-a-Service.

 In Concertiv’s new eBook, Business Spending in a Time of Uncertainty: A New Procurement Model for a New Era, discusses the strategic rationale and operational benefits of the PaaS model, leveraging insights from those already deploying it. 

In the excerpt below you will learn about how managing and procuring vendors is an inevitable and important aspect of business that everyone must endure. However, there is a more efficient and strategic process to follow to save your business spend and manage your vendors. Click here to download the full report.  

The Rise of the Procurement-as-a-Service Model

Middle market players are increasingly looking for experts to hand off contract negotiations to make sure they aren’t getting hustled.  

Working with experts, they can help evolve a more cohesive, predicable, and less expensive procurement consulting strategy to manage the bespoke portfolio of vendors all working specifically to solve your key business challenge. One vendor’s work supports or complements the other, and you know that you have a proprietary blend for your business’s key performance indicators that put you on a growth trajectory. 

CEOs are able to improve cashflow. CFOs have a better eye on where cash bleeds are popping up, and how to plug them. COOs are focusing more on getting products and services to the people paying for them, instead of keeping an eye on the products and services the company is paying for to make sure they’re getting every dollar’s worth.

A Simpler, More Modern Corporate Spend Strategy

Businesses of all sizes are shifting more of their focus to using tech-enabled outsourcing services to help with their strategic procurement. 

While it used to be common to see what some would call a “digital transformation” happening in the front office to drive competitive advantages, today, operations and back-office functions are looking around at ALL the disruption they’re facing, and looking for more effective, more efficient methods to keep up.

In fact, that success coming from the front office often means that operations teams need to work even smarter (and without help, much, much harder) to simply maintain effective growth.

But what about the transformational leaders who want to solve for, and even drive, further growth? 

Rather than trying to synchronize a myriad of systems into a single dashboard, what if you had a system that helped you pick the right blend of vendors for your KPIs? What would change if your 500-person business could get the benefits and pricing of a contract ten times, or 100 times, that size?

So how can you manage this vendor and spending sprawl, and do it efficiently, without having to build an internal procurement and vendor management organization?

Here are some recommendations based on nearly a decade of work on strategic procurement to get you started:

1. Get to know your spend and vendor relationships landscape

The key here is to fill in the blind spots of your status quo in terms of your spending. A robust understanding of where you are today will help you define or inform your go-forward strategy.

Having an understanding of the vendor universe can help ensure you’re getting the best deals, and services, and not missing any new market entrants that could bring the next phase of market transformation to your business. 

2. Create a strategic plan to execute

Take a step back and figure out the steps you need to take to go from your current status quo to the desired maintenance of your spending and vendor relationships over time. Figure out what services and vendors can help make your business more efficient and optimized. 

The plan does not have to be set in stone, as it may change as new vendors or technologies come to the market. The key is having a solid plan in place to move your business forward.

3. Execute your plan, and keep a vigilant eye on what’s changing

You’ve done your homework and prepared, so now it is time to take your plan into action. Communicate with your C-Suite team about the changes to come and the benefits that come along with the new plan. 

Continue to strategically review your plan, vendors, and what is going on in the market. The solution you put in place, if done effectively, has the ability to grow with your business. You will have a solution that can expand with you as your needs become more complex and you won’t need to reinvent the plan at every phase of growth.

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Interested in learning more about procurement-as-a-service for your firm?  

Learn how leading firms are partnering with Concertiv to reduce spend, minimize risk, and save time across key spend categories.