Strategic Sourcing
Procurement, particularly in the defense, aerospace, and manufacturing industries,
can consume a large portion of organizational budgets and constitute a major factor
in institutional success. Complicating factors such as a diminishing manufacturing
base make procurement a particularly critical area. This also makes it an area where
even small improvements can have a substantial impact.
Strategic sourcing helps companies establish strong, long-lasting relationships
with suppliers by providing buyers with the information they need to make timely,
well-informed decisions. With comprehensive supplier information on experience,
quality, and reliability, buyers can evaluate suppliers on more than just price.
This becomes particularly important when it comes to hard-to-source or bottleneck
items.
We work with our VizSeek suite of products
to improve visibility to both sides of
the sourcing equation. Our innovative e-sourcing technologies give suppliers a platform
to showcase their capabilities and products and provide buyers with the tools to
search for, communicate with, and source to suppliers.
Our work in strategic sourcing includes the following:
Rapid Part Response System: This system for the Oklahoma City Air Logistics
Center at Tinker Air Force Base addresses the challenges the center faces in maintaining
warfighter systems and ensuring mission readiness while working to reduce procurement
costs for parts for these systems. Because of expired OEM support or sole-source
situations, competitive acquisition can be difficult. Often times there are internal
DoD depot facilities with the capabilities to supply the parts, but because of a
lack of visibility into organic shop capabilities, these are overlooked. The Rapid
Part Response system leverages e-sourcing and online community technologies to provide
the comprehensive information on shops that are willing and able to fulfill the
needed parts.