Rapid sourcing gives manufacturers the tools and techniques to be more flexible without undermining the relationship that they have with their suppliers.
Incumbent vs. New Suppliers
Administering and evaluating responses is a traditional step in any strategic sourcing initiative. It is generally a rigorous process that includes opening bids to new and existing suppliers, RFIs, short-listing suppliers, RFPs, creating scoring models, interviews and lengthy evaluations. A rapid sourcing methodology employs a more pragmatic approach to this step in the sourcing initiative.
For example, if the company already has established strategic suppliers, the effort in this step of the process can be drastically reduced by limiting sourcing activities to the incumbent strategic suppliers. It’s extremely beneficial to initiate this process by categorizing the suppliers into a continuum by relationship type. A determination is then made on whether the incumbent strategic suppliers plus any necessary incumbent emerging suppliers can meet the company’s needs going forward.
Once it is determined that the incumbent suppliers can meet the needs of the business, a benchmarking exercise can be substituted for the RFI/RFP process. Benchmarking will still require the creation of a common market basket of goods or services across your total existing supply base in order to quickly understand/confirm whether the incumbent suppliers’ pricing is competitive or whether further negotiations will be required. This being said, weeks to months of time and effort can be saved by employing this rapid sourcing technique.
