Contact

Florian Dederichs

Founder & Partner

M.+49 160 93882573​

E.florian.dederichs@ocmconsulting.de

W.www.ocmconsulting.de​

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Negotiation Powerhouse

• Intensive price negotiations for indirect & direct categories
• Reducing costs and restructuring the supplier base in the shortest time possible

Active risk management in procurement

Many buyers know at least one of the following situations only too well:

• The business unit suddenly needs considerably more material than negotiated in the supplier contract or does not purchase the planned quantities.
• Operational management criticises procurement because seasonal or other changes in raw material prices have a negative impact on the product margin.
• The customer complains about a product defect. The supplier of the input material or good is unaware of any such faults so blame falls upon the procurement department.

And the list goes on...

The required flexibility in terms of quantity, scope, and market changes applies pressure to the procurement department. Failure to adequately manage procurement risk leads to unexpected costs and difficult conversations. As a result, procurement often finds itself lurching from issue to issue – a fire brigade turning its hose from one fire to the next.

"An uneven burden of risks in the supply chain leads to procurement operating as a fire brigade turning its hose from one fire to the next."

So what’s going wrong? It’s simple: a failure to adequately manage procurement risk. Many of the aforementioned problems are due to the uneven burden of the risk shared between suppliers, procurement, and customer. For instance, a decision on the price-point for a product will almost certainly take into account costs and margins, but often a risk premium is not included in the calculation. In summary, it is important for procurement to identify, avoid, or minimise these risks and to make existing risks transparent within the company.

Preventive identification of procurement risks

To identify the company’s risk position, a combined Pareto analysis of customer and related supplier contracts is required, with the aim of identifying those supplier-customer combinations that account for the majority of expenditure – and risk.

The contract terms must be examined, along with the historical and planned spend in terms of price and quantity and the external factors that affect the supplier or customer. Typical things to look out for in supplier risk assessment include:

• Minimum purchase quantities and other quantity commitments or barriers
• Contract or delivery windows and extensions
• Exclusivity agreements or other conditions that reduce competition
• Dependencies and agreements between supplier and customer
• Differences in pricing models between supplier and respective customer
• Fluctuations in demand and forecast quality
• Consideration of different scenarios, e.g. cost increase, cost decrease, damage etc.
• Liability regulations
• Procedure and accountability in case of damage

Identifying measures for the reduction of procurement risk

For each problematic risk position, the objective is to reduce the company’s exposure as much as is practically possible. Measures to enact such changes should be implemented at the next opportunity, depending on the extent of the risk and resource capacities. Such measures can include process or technology changes (e.g. improved forecasting analytics) but more often than not involve renegotiation of contractual terms with suppliers and customers. Such negotiation measures are developed and implemented in an annual plan coordinated between procurement and sales. Negotiation between sales and the customer should take place first, due to the typically lower negotiating power to make changes in the framework conditions agreed with the customer. Any risk minimisation objectives not achieved with the customer can then be vigorously enforced on the supplier side or, as a last step, achieved internally through appropriate risk management (e.g. diversification, expansion of the supplier base, or competition-enhancing measures to improve bargaining power and ability to enforce risk minimising changes).