CFG's corporate partners, 2buy2, explain how good procurement is key to weathering the inflation storm and delivering your strategic objectives.
It may seem counter-productive to talk about ‘investing’ during a time when prices and inflation seem to be ever-increasing, but now is precisely the time to be thinking smarter about your charity’s procurement.
There are urgent issues in the economy, and markets and costs are increasing. These, inevitably, are being passed onto the buyer, and unless those buyers have a managed, strategic and tactical procurement solution, then this can present immediate and long-term risks.
In a world where there is much uncertainty and prices are volatile, well-managed and effective ‘strategic’ procurement can help navigate a path and steer your charity to ensure that costs are controlled and supply remains secure. Not only that, but procurement can deliver significant value to the bottom line through savings, but also by being an enabler of outcomes.
Good procurement can help deliver your strategic objectives and provide tangible social value benefits too - but only if it is invested and equipped to do so!
What are the risks if your charity has no strategic procurement?
- Spend is a free-for-all
- There is no or little visibility of spend or contracts
- You will be losing money
- Staff are wasting time
- Loss of opportunity
- Reputational damage
If this sounds a little dramatic then it’s meant to. Procurement is a serious business and without a reasonable handle on it, the risks are significant, and they compound with time. The world in which we currently operate is a riskier place now. Traditional ‘good faith’ agreements between buyers and suppliers are often insufficient to cope with the demands on modern supply chains.
So, how can you save money by investing in your procurement?
It seems counter-intuitive but procurement is responsible for up to 70% of an organisation's revenue – cost reductions can have huge impact on income and surplus.
Getting better visibility of your spend and contracts is an essential part of your journey to procurement maturity. Gaining an insight of your spend, who you are spending with, what you are spending on, categorising which of those spends are in or out of a formal contract is key.
Conducting a spend analysis review maps and categorises data from your financial ledger to provide you with a comprehensive report on where you are spending, with whom, what spends are critical to your charity, where there is duplication, and where there are potential savings to be made.
A contracts register tool is a very useful starting point to begin to populate with your existing contracts to highlight those spends which are ‘out of contract’ and therefore are at high risk. This simple ‘visibility’ exercise is incredibly powerful and will help you and your stakeholders to understand where the gaps, risks and, indeed, opportunities are.
Then it is time to act upon the intelligence gathered through your data and putting in place solutions to meet that need. Those solutions could be:
- Re-procurement of strategically critical spends
- Establish ‘corporate’ contracts and solutions for all staff to follow
- Establish organisational procurement policy, strategy and procurement template documents
- Re-negotiate with suppliers and get robust contract terms in place
- Establish procurement processes, procure2pay processes and reporting
- Review of procurement roles and responsibilities across your charity and investment in procurement training to support those with procurement responsibility
The important thing is to target the top spends by risk and value. The risk to your charity should that particular supply fail, and the value to you in terms of its impact on your bottom line.
Procurement maturity does not happen overnight and requires the winning of hearts and minds across the charity to truly embed.
Get in touch to find out how 2buy2 can help your charity start its strategic procurement journey.