Strategic Sourcing

The first step in the strategic sourcing process is to capture and validate item and service requirements. Here, we work with end-users to review purchase history information that was either provided or identified during a DSSI consulting project effort.

A critical component of this effort is to understand and document supplier services that are currently provided or supplier services that the client could benefit from in the near future. We know from experience, end-user service requirements must be addressed to ensure program adoption.

A client's ability to take advantage of aggregation opportunities is directly dependent upon the level of detail captured and maintained within their item data. At DSSI, we capture and maintain item data at the manufacturer name and manufacturer part number. This allows us to aggregate a client's spend from across the enterprise and combine it with that of other DSSI client's yielding leverage and value during strategic sourcing events.

Market-basket sourcing efforts only yield savings estimates; our approach provides specific item pricing that is compared to a client’s last paid price. This is why realized savings match or exceed established expectations.

Seasoned procurement professionals know that it is not all about price. Before we engage suppliers to bid a client's requirements, we ensure that they have the delivery and extended service capabilities to meet the comprehensive needs associated with a particular client location, commodity category or sub-set of items.

The supplier market is always changing. For this reason, we regularly include current DSSI suppliers and client incumbent suppliers in this process step. This helps us broaden the potential supply base and to discover previously unknown supply capabilities.

The advanced e-Sourcing tools contained within our e-Procurement technology suite, Epic® allows DSSI’s procurement professionals to process and summarize mass quotes from hundreds of suppliers across thousands of items very quickly. In addition to ensuring a fair and comprehensive bid process, this step allows DSSI to rapidly identify specific opportunities for supply-base consolidation.

There are five factors unique to DSSI that allow our sourcing professionals to consistently achieve significant savings during negotiation and contracting.

    The market insights our sourcing professionals can glean from our proprietary database that contains pricing and transaction histories pertaining to millions of items;
    The competitive process used to generate the bids we consider;
    The volume of spend we represent and can actually deliver to the selected supplier(s);
    The process efficiencies we can offer the selected suppliers; and,
    Our deep understanding of location-specific servicing requirements.

Simply put, our strategic sourcing professionals can offer the supply base a lower cost of doing business combined with a realizable increase in business volume.

Our supply structure implementation approach is designed to ensure that the critical promises made during negotiation and contracting result in repeatable performance and lasting value. This final step accounts for the establishment and management of supplier records, catalog content including pricing, location specific supplier services, delivery requirements, invoicing and payment processing, and supplier performance.

We provide additional support for source to pay clients in the areas of Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Vendor Managed Ordering (VMO), on-line invoicing, supplier payment processing, invoice consolidation, and performance management and reporting. All of these efforts are designed to translate identifies savings opportunities into realized savings.