In this week’s featured event we heard from the Sourcing Interests Group Thought Leaders Council. They offered their definitions of savings as well as best practices. If you are interested in more about the members of the Council, read the SIG page about them in the Resource Center.

The Thought Leaders Council advises SIG on the build-out of the SIG Resource Center, makes regular contributions, serves as subject matter experts, and conducts working groups. The Council is representative of the SIG Membership, in that the majority of members are sourcing executives from the Buy-side. The Working Groups take suggestions from the SIG community and build guidelines for sourcing initiatives and categories.

The event is also on demand in the Resource Center.

When you read a title like the one this webinar has, and read the titles and qualifications of the panelists, you might think that you are going to get a silver bullet answer to the challenges you have around savings in your own organization. The fact of the matter is, you have to negotiate savings, realize savings, track savings, and then have those savings materially affect the bottom line – either because they were removed from the budget or because they were deliberately reinvested.

While there is no easy answer, each of the panelists on the call reinforced the idea that we need to keep doing the things we are already doing – but get better, and faster, and more structured about it. For example, there is a finite list of types of savings (think rate based v. volume based, v. rebates) that your organization is willing to recognize. Articulate that list, and define the calculation and tracking methods that will be used. Get finance/accounting involved for the definition and keep them involved as you need validation on a project by project basis.

The advice from the Council spanned the entire procurement life cycle from planning to contracts. Some of the best points included:

If you do have the opportunity to view the webinar on demand (or if you attended live) my final piece of advice is to print slides 11 and 12 and start carrying them to your meetings with executives or internal stakeholders. Having a framework on hand that walks through the types of savings opportunities (more traditional as well as ‘other considerations’) will help you outline the ways you can help manage their spend and may give them new ideas as well.