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Purchasers play critical role
Purchasing staff play a critical role in the success of any business. When equipped with the proper skills, purchasers can dramatically reduce costs, improve quality, and reduce risk to an organization.
1. Lower costs
Reducing costs is the primary goal of any purchasing department. Effective purchasing practices unlock savings by choosing a mix of suppliers who can provide the best prices and terms.
Purchasing can also help you save by providing better transparency in how your company spends. This will, in turn, allow you to negotiate better contracts and free up your cash flow.
2. Reduce risk and ensure the security of supply
Businesses cannot operate without the necessary supplies. Purchasers must identify which goods and services are crucial to the company and take the necessary steps to secure their supply chains.
Supply chain management involves sharing and managing risks with suppliers. This can be done by moving the risks to the suppliers who are best able to manage it. Or it can be done through diversification of supply.
3. Manage relationships
Purchasing professionals must manage relationships with a variety of vendors and suppliers. These relationships are crucial to managing supply chains and pricing.
Purchasing professionals also have to manage relationships within your company. They must work with internal stakeholders to ensure that activities and goals are aligned.
4. Improve quality
Purchasing departments can help to improve quality by establishing performance goals and then tracking performance against those targets. Metrics may include durability, the look and feel of the product, or the timeliness of delivery.
Improve your organization’s purchasing
Are you a purchasing professional? Or do you employee purchasing staff within your organization? Effective purchasing practices can greatly benefit an organization. However, ineffective purchasing practices can have huge costs.
The Management Development Institute’s (MDI) Purchasing Certificate program equips professionals with the skills needed to positively impact a business’s bottom line. Professionals attend a total of four courses, each of which are two days long. Two courses are coming up soon, so register to hold your seat today!
Get registered
Fundamentals of Purchasing (Two-day program)
April 9 & 10 from 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Improving Your Purchasing Negotiation Skills (Two-day program)
April 11 & 12 from 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
The remaining two courses, Strategic Purchasing & Supply Chain Management and Understanding Purchasing & Supply Contracts, will be offered in the fall of 2019.
