Purchasing Strategy and Leadership

Course details

This workshop will take you into the realms of strategic procurement. You will be equipped to deal with more complex and business-critical procurement projects and learn about tools and approaches that will allow you to get the best out of your suppliers.

Through this course, you will be asked to develop your own approach to strategic procurement so that you can purchase in a more professional and effective manner.

This workshop takes you through the stages of strategic procurement – from initial discussions with stakeholders all the way through to the research, selection and management of suppliers.

You will look at when a strategic approach is right for the organisation and learn some different ways of handling strategic procurement projects. The strategic approach often involves longer-term partnerships and you will look at how to achieve value for everyone involved in the deal.

IS IT RIGHT FOR ME?

This workshop is designed to help people who are managing larger or more strategic procurement projects. If you are new to strategic procurement, it will give you an understanding of what it involves and some tools to get started in a professional and effective way.

If you already undertake strategic procurement projects, the course is a useful refresher and you will pick up some additional ideas and tools to extend what you already do.

WHAT WILL I LEARN?

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Explain what strategic procurement is and why it is important to businesses in all industry sectors
• Manage stakeholder engagement and get strategic procurement projects started in a professional and successful manner
• Be able to research the market and collate the data that is most critical to adding value from your procurement activity
• Have an understanding of insourcing, outsourcing and sourcing from low cost countries and be able to recommend the most effective strategy for each situation
• Develop a supplier engagement and negotiation strategy
• Manage negotiations to achieve supplier partnerships that create value for both your organisation and your strategic suppliers
• Apply strategic procurement principles to the needs of your own organisation

WHAT WILL IT COVER?

What is Strategic Procurement?

• Differences between transactional and strategic procurement
• How strategic procurement contributes to the value chain and total cost of ownership

Stakeholder Engagement and Project Initiation

• Applying project management principles to get strategic procurement
  projects off the ground
• Engaging stakeholders and developing the specification
• Building an effective business case for your strategic procurement project
• Developing robust selection criteria

Researching the Market

• Developing a supplier long list or short list
• Making use of external and internal data sources
• Considering non-traditional sources – the third sector, social enterprises
• Tailoring the research to the needs of the project

Selecting a Strategy

• Making the insourcing vs outsourcing decision
• Factors that favour low cost country sourcing
• Identifying opportunities to add further value to the project

Supplier Engagement and Negotiation

• Strategies for supplier partnership
• Developing a supplier engagement strategy
• Preparing the negotiation
• Tendering, auctioning and multi-stage negotiation