Nine Tips on Selecting Strategic Sourcing Consultants.

Strategic sourcing consultants offer a means to energize employees when companies change their strategic sourcing methodology.

Most strategic sourcing consultants are not individuals. Rather, they are teams of consultants trained and experienced at taking organizations with classic transactional procurement systems and transitioning them to effective a form of strategic sourcing methodology.

Here are nine tips of finding the right strategic sourcing consultants for your business:

1. Ensure they are independent and not aligned with any provider. Many PSP companies and other e procurement companies offer strategic sourcing consultants. These individuals can indeed help you, but they are biased in the systems they will recommend.
2. Review the quality of the individual consultants resumes. Birds of a feather flock together. Failing to screen the quality of the individual consultants can result in you paying top dollar for mediocre people.
3. Ask for references from companies or a similar size or from within your sector. Not all implementations are created equal. The strategic sourcing consultants you select should be familiar with your industry and comfortable working with a business similar in size and function to yours.
4. Meet team members, ensure they get you excited about strategic sourcing. If they are not energized, they cannot energize your team. Consultants should be passionate and confident about the gains they can achieve for your company.
5. Review their training plan for your team. Ensure the plan includes both formal training and documentation of the informal learning along the way.
6. Leverage their knowledge to select the right strategic sourcing manager for the road forward. If you do not already have a strategic sourcing manager in mind, ask the strategic sourcing consultants to draw up the job description they would recommend for that role at your company. If it does not match your concept, either you are not thinking in the right direction or they are not the right company for you.
7. Review their plan for centralizing your purchasing data. This will let you know quickly if the company understands the complexities of your business.
8. Understand their methodology for forming cross functional teams. Strategic sourcing consultants do not necessarily understand your business – but they should if they are to win the contract to implement your strategic sources.
9. Find out what internal support the consultant or consultant team will need. Rather than viewing it as a weakness, find out if their proposal involves requirements for you to provide support staff. That indicates they have respect for keeping your costs down during implementation.

By keeping these nine tips of screening your strategic sourcing consultants in play, you can find the right group to start your company on the road to significant savings.

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