So how can your procurement department save money for the company? The answer is simple. Wherever your company is spending money is a potential place where savings can be obtained. Savings essentially are where the money is and where the money is going. The money is not primarily going towards paying salaries for your procurement team or even anywhere else within the budget that is allocated towards the procurement department. Instead, the money that your team can recapture is money that is leaving the company and going to the suppliers. How you interact with your suppliers is truly going to determine how much you can save on expenditures and how much money can be recaptured and brought back to your organization.
Negotiation is a part of the process for sure. Being a good negotiator is definitely one way to drive costs down so that your organization can save money on expenditures. But negotiation is not the only way. You can also collaborate with your suppliers. If you are able to communicate effectively with suppliers to find ways that you can both save money, this is what is known as ‘smart procurement.’ Whether you are negotiating or working together with your supplier to come up with ways that you can save money together, things run much more smoothly when you have the respect of the supplier. You need to first ensure that you are dealing with the right person within the supply company to establish that they are someone who has the necessary authority to make the cost-cutting decisions that you are discussing.
Imagine that you are the representative of the supply company. If you had to choose to put your trust in either a non-certified procurement representative or a procurement profession with a certification, who would you trust more? Most likely you’d be more apt to think of the certified procurement representative as the more qualified individual. On top of that, if the supply company knows you are sending a certified procurement representative, they will be more likely to send one of their key decision-makers to the negotiations enabling you to form better relationships with supply companies. As you can see, a procurement certification truly is the recipe for success in this industry.
Certifications are also an excellent credential when dealing with international transactions. If you select a globally recognized certification you can get a great deal of leverage from it that will lend itself not only to dealings with national organizations but also to dealings with organizations from elsewhere in the world. You can also obtain certifications for certain countries that you will be dealing with in anticipation of negotiations to put yourself in a better position to come out with a great bargain. The bottom line is that whatever investment is necessary to obtain certification it is definitely worth the expense. One way to go about obtaining a certification is to approach a superior at your company and ask for the company to sponsor you and your team so that you may become certified. If you want to really make an impact, you can always go out and pursue a certification on your own. Just think of how much of a commitment to success that shows!
