Why Should Companies Consider a Specialist Procurement Market Intelligence Firm?

Posted by Ankit Kohli on December 16th, 2015

To answer the question, you first need to understand what is Procurement Market Intelligence and why is it so critical to the decision-making and procurement processes. Moreover, you need to realise that using an expert is perhaps the key differentiator between a strong bottom line and crippling losses. Here is a guide to answering these questions one at a time.

What is Procurement Market Intelligence?

Let us start by understanding, what is procurement market intelligence? To put it simply, it is the process of developing and supporting strategic sourcing decisions to acquire goods and services from an external party. The goal is to meet your requirements accurately and effectively (i.e. the acquirer’s) in terms of both quality and quantity. This ability to procure or gather market and industry information in a timely and accurate manner is important for you or any organisation to take an informed decision. Factors such as stock with the OEM, delivery and handling, marginal profits, price fluctuations, etc. are crucial for taking effective procurement decisions. They also help businesses to take tough decisions in times of scarcity. Market intelligence provides an enterprise with a decisive competitive edge over others.

It also helps an establishment to acquire and analyse information to understand the market in terms of current and future needs. It also helps to assess changes in the business environment that may affect the nature of the foreseeable future market. It further involves developing a market intelligence strategy that integrates the existing procurement structures and processes to deliver significant value to an organisation.

Now that you have a good idea ofmarket intelligence, it is logical to focus on why it is important in the procurement process:

• You can access to a good quality and relevant information that brings value to your procurement decisions
• It helps an enterprise to make in-depth assessments and arrive at insights related to the market, consumers, competition and the suppliers
• It helps your business and its management to take informed decisions by defining and following a specific procurement strategy based on the market intelligence inputs received
• It further helps your organisation to stay ahead of the competition by developing and promoting an effective relationship with the suppliers
• Market intelligence provides a major strategic advantage to organisations in mitigating procurement risks and streamlining the inventory flow

Procurement market intelligence is extremely important for businesses, especially with the global nature of world trade today. For instance,

• Procurement market intelligence helps businesses achieve the desired results in a cost-effective and timely manner
• It gives a competitive edge to your organisation as it is able to plan better and have a long-term insight into the flow of goods and associated factors
• It helps your business in its procurement process by supporting accurate and reliable decision-making along the entire hierarchy of the organisation
• With the help of procurement market intelligence, an enterprise is able to view the external marketplace and acquire relevant data to manage the inventory and the supply chain

Finally, let us talk about the benefits of using specialist procurement intelligence firms and why they are critical in ensuring your business keeps increasing its ROI:

• These firms help their client organisations to increase the returns on their investments by providing them with useful actionable insights that help plan and manage the entire supply chain better
• They also help enterprises to increase their overall productivity and efficiency as no time is wasted searching for data or undertaking last-minute course corrections to minimise costs and keep the logistics in line with requirements
• These firms incorporate the expertise of many practising procurement professionals and help organisations realise their full potential as the focus shifts to core functions instead on secondary or tertiary needs
• They also help organisations develop and maintain trust-based and transparent relationships with their suppliers, one of the key ingredients to ensure a smooth product flow

As you can see, procurement market intelligence provides businesses with the much-needed strategies and approaches so they can solve long-standing information related obstacles and deliver their results on time. There are quite a few procurement market intelligence firms in the market that can help you manage your resources and time better. Search the internet for a few such firms and contact them to understand how they can help you.

About the Author:

Pure Research provides customised research and business intelligence to corporates, public sector organisations, financial services firms, and professional services firms worldwide. The company delivers high quality procurement and supply chain intelligence to procurement professionals and their organisations. It provides business and market intelligence to strategy and marketing teams at corporations, and to professional services firms. Pure Research also provides customised financial research and ESG research to financial services firms. Analysts from Pure Research work as an extension of their client organisations to deliver high quality research and insights. The company has offices in London, U.K. and Delhi, India.