The Amphire purchasing cycle
1 Situation analysis
Understanding where your business is today is key to any improvement plan. We can provide specialist analysis to give you a detailed picture of your business' current purchasing strengths and weaknesses, benchmarked against similar companies. This can include:
- spend data collection and analysis
- category analysis based on consumer data
- benchmarking pricing
- product and supplier performance
- a review of your purchasing systems and processes
Using these tools we will produce a Spend Intelligence report and then base your purchasing strategy on it.
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2 Strategy formulation
We can help you develop the best strategy for your business, based on your situation analysis and your objectives. Once you decide the route forward, we'll outline the changes or systems that will help you - from purchasing services and systems, to quality control and kitchen management.
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3 Supplier identification
Finding the right suppliers is key to your purchasing. Our sourcing system will prepare your tender in an electronic format. We use this to contact a huge range of suppliers worldwide with full details of your requirements. Suppliers also have to respond electronically in a specified format, so you can evaluate
one supplier against another - quickly and accurately.
You can assess everything from prices, financial standing and track record, to capability, risk, procedures and policies. Our system can also weight and score the data to help you
rationalize the list of suppliers. Using this robust and structured process, you can be sure of choosing a supplier who will deliver exactly what you need.
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4 Strategic negotiation
Negotiation is fundamental to your entire purchasing process. It can be extremely costly - simply because it's so time-consuming. But getting the right price is crucial if your business is to be competitive.
We can help you save money in two ways.
- By improving the efficiency of the process. Our sourcing system contains an e-auction application which helps you to trim weeks from the supplier negotiation process. We've used this system across a variety of product categories and typically save clients 10-20% on their current price.
- By increasing your buying power. Combining volumes with other clients means we can secure better terms with suppliers on key products - from grocery products and fresh produce to stationery and mobile phones.
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5 Contract management
A great deal only delivers returns when it's implemented. Contracts need careful monitoring and management to deliver the promised savings. So we will help you actively manage your contracts using the latest
technology to track performance and compliance. With better management information, you'll see even more ways to improve efficiency and maximize your savings.
Our tools can also provide you with a flexible approach to buying goods with
a volatile market pricing, like fresh produce, meat and fish, to make certain you always secure the best market price.
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6 Purchasing
We know that you operate extremely tight margins, so getting the purchasing cycle right is essential to improve and maintain your
bottom line.
We will set up a trading hub for you. Through it, you can manage your purchasing process from placing an order, right through to paying the invoice. It's an incredibly flexible system that allows you to:
- improve efficiency
- reduce non-compliance
- monitor your suppliers' performance
- increase the response time of any contract change.
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7 Order fulfilment and tracking
Both you and your supplier want to know the status of every order. So you can replace the usual paper based tracking system with our more streamlined order monitoring system. You know exactly what you've ordered and the supplier knows what they have delivered. So you can assess service levels more easily.
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8 Invoice reconciliation and payment
We will set up and host a system that allows you to match all suppliers' invoices to details of orders you've received.
The whole system minimizes error and removes costly manual processing of credit notes, invoices and payments for you and your suppliers. The whole process becomes transparent for everyone involved, so it's
easier to spot discrepancies and put them right straightaway.
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9 Spend intelligence
Spend intelligence is what we know about what you spend, how you spend it and who you spend it with. To make lasting and effective improvements to your purchasing, details of your spending need to be accessible on demand.
By automatically collating contract and transaction data, our system makes this information available quickly and clearly, so you always have an up to date picture.
Once you can clearly see what you spend and where, we can help you manage any issues. Through supplier audits, routine checks and trouble shooting we can help you assess and manage the performance of your suppliers. We can also audit, support and train your outlets so you can efficiently manage wastage at the end of the supply chain.
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