Easie offers procurement solutions for large-scale business projects in today’s shortage environment
Today’s supply chain industry has transformed drastically due to pressures rising from a multitude of new areas. In addition to the ongoing disease outbreaks impacting the supply chain, suppliers are also faced with international trade restrictions, growing import/export restrictions, increasing fuel prices, higher costs of materials and equipment, longer shipment times and a shortage of service workers; all contributing negatively to the economic supply environment.
Once reliable suppliers are now finding it more difficult to fulfill orders back to their pre-pandemic levels. The complexity and variability of these factors have a significant effect on downstream operations for areas such as business operations, manufacturing, agriculture, real estate development and more. Organizations are required to perform additional work reorganizing and formulating new processes to adapt to these latest conditions, often with fewer resources to handle them. We outline some of Easie’s key findings and tips from our experience handling procurement for our clients.
Five key obstacles businesses are faced with in today’s procurement process
To conduct procurement effectively, businesses must address new challenges in sourcing materials and equipment from vendors. To overcome potential roadblocks, organizations should focus on planning and creating new strategies, preventing or adapting to longer timelines where necessary and updating/reviewing existing processes and semi-automated trackers to manage their purchases effectively.
Here are five key areas businesses should take into consideration when adapting to today’s procurement environment:
1. Identifying and vetting the right vendors:
Anyone can Google search a list of suppliers online that can fulfill materials, but what should one do if the only vendors of those products have no online reviews? Evaluating and making sure a vendor is the right fit for your organization requires a lot more thoughtful effort.
Vetting vendors may ultimately save businesses on costs, reduce risk and other setbacks in the long run. Businesses should consider calling and speaking with owners or employees from the supplier’s team to validate their legitimacy. Familiarize yourself with how they operate and whether their processes are congruent with your operations.
Find out whether their supply of inventory is within reasonable vicinity of your project to potentially reduce delivery times. Determine whether they can handle supplying multiple materials from your project. It’s often preferred to work with one reliable vendor that can fulfill more of your items than working with multiple vendors that may add more uncontrollable variables into the project critical path.
Here are some useful questions you could ask vendors to see if they are the right fit for your project:
Have you handled any projects in the past similar to ours at scale?
Have you experienced any delays or other issues with these products?
Have you experienced any delays or other issues with shipping to “X” location?
Will the product be coming from your local warehouse or another location?
Will your team perform onsite measurements of our space prior to purchase to ensure materials are the right fit for these spaces? (i.e. with physical equipment or furniture)
Could you please confirm you have “N” quantity in stock and ready to ship? If not, when will this quantity be ready for shipment?
How many weeks would it take to ship “N” amount of items?
Should we expect deliveries to arrive in batches or all at once?
If onsite coordination/installation is needed, can your team work with our onsite team?
Will we have a single point of contact throughout this process/are they available outside normal business hours in case of issues?
2. Out-of-stock inventory:
Some online vendors may show they have an item in stock on their e-commerce store, but do they actually carry the quantity for the project and can they deliver it on time for you to meet your project deadline?
It is in a business’s best interest to contact the vendor to see if they can clearly communicate the status of their inventory stock or when they can secure the quantity you need. Some questions to consider asking include if there are any potential roadblocks or problems suppliers might be facing in their stock levels. Items could be drop shipped directly by a backlogged fabricator, a supplier is overseas and may be faced with higher than usual transportation costs and issues, or there’s a shortage of raw materials potentially adding to delays. You don’t want to find yourself surprised to hear of additional delays when an order has already been processed.
Research and find as much information on their delivery process prior to placing your order. If you find yourself running into issues with a particular product, consider researching an alternative product that meets the requirements and repeat the process of vetting them. Finding the answers to these questions earlier rather than later will help you make adjustments to plan accordingly and reduce potential logistical setbacks further into the project.
3. Adapting to longer timelines:
Businesses may find themselves stuck with a vendor that can only provide the products they need with much longer than usual lead times. The task of getting materials delivered may be on the critical path affecting workers and other projects that depend on its completion, so notifying your team as early as possible of the delivery timelines is incredibly important. Timely communication of these issues to stakeholders and team members is key to reorganizing priorities and coordinating to build a restructured timeline that can best accommodate any delays.
4. Ensure accurate dimension measurements and style/design consistency for physical materials:
Is your jobsite properly measured and can the space accommodate varying sizes and quantities of items? To help prevent issues with fitting/installing items into the space, obtain or create accurately measured blueprints or 3D CAD files of the project site, perform physical measurements onsite and ideally find a service provider (e.g. Easie) that can perform onsite measurements or 3D scan and process the physical space. Sometimes, you may need to purchase items, such as furniture, from many different vendors.
Having a design team that can 3D render/scan and properly scale and fit the products into the space for visual reference can help validate the items meet your expectations prior to purchasing them.
5. Obtaining, managing, and tracking procurement to ensure timelines are met can be cumbersome:
Staying on top of numerous orders is difficult for a single person let alone a small team to handle. Spreadsheets, databases, or other procurement management systems can help you stay organized, but clear communication systems and training of staff to keep track of the statuses of orders is equally just as important.
Ideally, assigning a project manager to monitor your procurement, manage tasks in fulfillment, and facilitate communication could help make sure nothing slips through the cracks and progress is continually made.
It takes multidisciplinary skills, specialists, managers and systems to truly conduct procurement effectively and with operational excellence in today’s environment.
Easie provides project managed solutions to help facilitate complex procurement for any business operation
Procurement is not a simple job for businesses. Easie can help plan, manage, and implement a streamlined, predictable procurement process using our centralized, multidisciplinary team of specialists and project managers. Our procurement services include our core team project managing your procurement needs from initial research to confirming items were delivered onsite and received in expected condition. Easie stays in communication with your team to provide updates, status reports and collaborate with you on customizing the processes to ensure your needs are met.
Specialists on our team can help fulfill any requirement, from 3D scanning your space and assistance with creating 3D objects to specification to creating automated workflows and systems to ensure procurement is tracked and organized, Easie can build the tools and perform processes necessary to aid in your procurement project. We provide approachable scoping and pricing to perform multidisciplinary work, helping businesses save on cost and time from hiring and training multiple consultants/specialists and managing the project through completion.
“Working with Easie to handle our procurement has been very seamless and pleasant. Instead of having to hire additional labor to make all of our purchases, we use Easie for comprehensive supply chain logistics and purchasing. It has lightened the load on our internal team and allowed us to focus on more important items. We use Easie consistently and would recommend them to other clients.”
-Zane Curdes, Director of Development at Vivo Investment Group
Easie can assist in making sure your team has the proper training, knowledge and tools to make your business’s procurement program efficient and successful. Easie has multiple ready-to-implement processes and management materials that can be customized to your business and team. Let us help you grow by working with your existing star players.
Easie is a consulting firm for all business needs. We continue to develop and expand new program areas based on the projects we work on for our clients. We are excited to offer our comprehensive procurement services for all businesses looking for an ideal procurement solution. Make your procurement easy, with Easie. Get in touch with our team to learn more about how we can help streamline your business projects.
This article was edited by Rebecca Gray and Rock Vitale.
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