Whitepaper Wednesday - Achieving Savings on Indirect Spend

Welcome to another installment of Whitepaper Wednesday here on the Purchasing Certification Blog. This week, I'll be reviewing a whitepaper entitled "Driving Savings from Indirect Spend" from Ariba.

At the core of this whitepaper are five ingredients for successfully achieving savings on indirect spend categories. Those ingredients are:

• Spend Access
• Proven Sourcing Process
• Category Expertise
• Electronic Sourcing Tool
• Compliance and Demand Management

This whitepaper is short - only 5 pages - so I can't elaborate too much without giving the whole whitepaper away. However, one thing that I think should be emphasized to executives who may not be completely in touch with what goes on "in the trenches" is the last point: compliance and demand management.

The whitepaper points out that "as much as 15 percent of identified savings are lost without effective compliance management processes." This means that the estimated savings can go right down the drain if your organization does not take action to ensure that its employees don't buy from the wrong suppliers, they do buy from the right suppliers, they don't buy what they don't really need, and the right suppliers charge the right price.

The whitepaper closes with "10 Things to Keep in Mind to Make Your Indirect Spend Initiative a Success." It's definitely a good overview of the things to consider when looking to indirect spend for savings. You can download your own copy of this whitepaper for free (registration required) from Ariba's Web site.

To Your Career,
Charles Dominick, SPSM
President & Chief Procurement Officer
Next Level Purchasing, Inc.
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