Procurement Services

SOURCING SERVICES

Forward-thinking companies are making their value chains more elastic and their organizations more flexible. And with the decline of the vertically integrated business model, sourcing is evolving into a strategic process for organizing and fine-tuning the value chain. The question is no longer whether to outsource a capability or activity but rather how to source activities in the value chain so that they deliver more value without a linear increase in the team budgets. Dataction’s Sourcing Services provide a very effective and commercially viable alternative to bring more spend under procurement control.

At Dataction, we firmly believe that your in-house procurement team is best positioned to deliver business objectives given their deep insights about your company and its vendor ecosystem. Dataction’s engagement model is therefore based on augmenting your current team with our offshore team that can lead or support various sourcing activities ranging from routine, tactical to highly complex and strategic activities.

Dataction’s sourcing services allows clients to increase the sourcing leverage in a very cost-effective way. Our sourcing services include:

Strategic Services
This service deals with providing execution support to client’s in-house buyer(s) for high value and complex sourcing projects.

Complex sourcing projects take up a large proportion of the buyer’s time. In order to efficiently leverage the talent within the strategic sourcing team, it is recommended that the core activities involving category expertise and stakeholder or supplier management are handled by the in-house buyer while other activities are managed by Dataction. The high-level activities managed by Dataction usually include :
  • Primary and secondary due diligence for formulation of business case or fact base
  • Market research to propose suppliers that should be considered for the project
  • DraftRFx/ Auction invitation and tender documents
  • co-develop RFx questionnaire
  • co-develop RFx scoring/ evaluation parameters
  • co-develop pricing template
  • set-up, administration of e-sourcing event, user support/ training
  • facilitating and supporting RFP evaluation process through price and response comparison.
Being closely involved in these activities gives us the ability to help the buyers with vital analytics such as Make v/s Buy, Cost Modelling, Total Cost of Ownership analysis, etc.

Dataction has a proprietary framework for identifying the best fit e-sourcing strategy to deliver optimum value.
RFx Execution and Management
Dataction assumes end to end responsibility for setup and administration of RFx on your sourcing system. Dataction acts as a single point of contact for your stakeholders and suppliers and is responsible for seamless execution of the Rfx events. We leverage our vast experience of conducting Rfx events across a plethora of industries and categories to implement the best practises, ensuring that maximum value is delivered from the Rfxs while simplifying the process for all involved parties. The high-level activities include:

  • Create Rfx on your sourcing platform and administer supplier setup for the same
  • Collate documents from different teams and upload relevant data in the event
  • Help draft detailed tender documents and requirement specifications
  • Gather relevant questions from different teams, recommend changes to allow auto scoring and formulate questions as per industry best practices
  • Devise evaluation criteria and scoring parameters and matrices for fruitful results
  • Troubleshoot supplier queries, and liaise between supplier and buyer for solving project specific queries
  • Collate, evaluate, score and report supplier responses and commercial proposals using various costing models and like for like frameworks to facilitate further action
Auction Execution and Management
Dataction has a vast experience of conducting various types of auctions for a variety of categories. We work closely with your teams to suggest the most appropriate auction strategy that deliver maximum savings. Dataction also takes responsibility of setting up auctions based on agreed strategy, conducting supplier trainings, executing actual auctions, and preparing various auction reports with award recommendation. The high-level activities include:

  • Create auctions on your sourcing platform and administer supplier setup for the same
  • Collate documents from various teams and upload relevant data in the event
  • Design the scope of work document encompassing all relevant details of the job at hand
  • Set up the necessary specification and line items on the sourcing system required to take auction forward
  • Train the suppliers for submitting accurate bids to create a level playing field through increased transparency
  • Monitor live auctions to ensure visibility of bid status in real-time and aid all participants to facilitate a seamless event
  • Assess supplier response using a holistic evaluation criterion and report superior insights on specifications, quality, and price
Tail-Spend Management

Procurement functions devote little attention to managing tail spend because it’s so complex. Typically, it involves a vast number of transactions, many product categories, and a largely anonymous supplier base. This level of complexity requires a lot of resource, which the procurement functions lack, and requires attention as tail items aren’t a top priority.

Globally, spend value is the primary factor for defining tail spend and procurement solutions but we at Dataction believe that the organization should include a consideration of risk in addition to the spend value. Risk associated with Products and suppliers not actively managed by Procurement should be evaluated on parameters such as:

Purchase value :

Products and services with low purchase value per item/ product and an accompanying low risk of substitute suppliers and products

Contracting complexity :

Organizational risk is minimal for products and services which can be purchased off standard contracts or low complexity contracts

Criticality of product / service :

Products and services which are low risk considering the organization’s core business

Intellectual property :

Products and services which carry low risk in terms of intellectual property implications

Brand reputation :

Some suppliers with low spend might have an implication on an organization’s brand, and should be managed by strategic team in spite of the spend value


This service is designed to bring high volume, low value purchasing under procurement control that would otherwise not find procurement resourcing due to larger and more critical projects. Dataction assumes end to end responsibility of sourcing low value requirements while adhering to company specific procurement policies and ensuring good buying experience for end users. The high-level activities under this service include:

Spend Analysis and Opportunity Assessment
  • Spend classification as per the agreed taxonomy
  • Supplier normalization & grouping and identifying various strategies to drive savings by increasing spend under management
  • Segregate and group Tail-spend into Head, Middle and Tail as per agreed definition of Tail-Spend and attack each segment with customized solutions for realizing gains
Sourcing Desk
  • Help requestors with guided buying leveraging existing catalogs, contracts and marketplace
  • Tender/auction execution, commercial and Contract negotiations, and Contract finalization & sign-off process administration
  • Single source negotiations and order management
  • Follow up processes

Advantages

Our industry-wide experience helps us understand the intricate nuances of every category and deliver the best solution to address any challenge.

Responsive Layout

Cost Savings

  • Head of Tail’ spend can be reduced by 10-15% through tactical sourcing, higher savings can be realized on highly commoditized products through effective use of auctions.
  • Significant savings in operational procurement costs for invoice and PO processing through effective use of catalogs and marketplace.
Retina Graphics

Efficiency

  • Reduction in supplier base and purchase request volumes allows strategic procurement team to focus on the larger contracts and deliver more value to the business.
  • Increasing Catalog coverage and use of self-service options such as marketplace reduces the workload for operational procurement teams up to 20%, which they can use for more value adding task.
Powerful Performance

Risk Management

  • Increasing spend under procurement management increases compliance with procurement policies and contract terms, while reducing the number of unreliable suppliers from the base.
Responsive Layout

Internal Customer Satisfaction

  • Self-service options through increased catalog coverage and use of marketplace and improved turnaround times made possible through a dedicated sourcing team working on robust SLAs enhances the overall procurement experience for internal customers.
Contract Services
Managing numerous contracts across a plethora of suppliers, categories and geographies is very time consuming and cost intensive. Hence, realizing and maintaining the results achieved by procurement in a timely, risk-mitigating way, requires a dynamic and well-resourced contracting function.

All the good work and hard negotiations done by Procurement teams fail to deliver the expected results if the businesses fail to comply with the contracts. On the other hand, unfavorable conditions in the contracts can pose significant commercial and reputational risks to the business.

Dataction’s contract services help you derive value from your incumbent contracts and avoid any underlying risks. Our contract services include:

Contract Database Enhancement

Contract Review

Contract Compliance Monitoring, Auditing, & Expiration Analysis

Contract Database Enhancement

This service helps sustain the maturity of the contract database and reduce the risk of operating on retroactive contracts. The high-level activities include:

  • Creating inventory of current contracts
  • Establishing data capture and quality control plan in agreement with the client’s Project Manager
  • Co-developing contract meta data template and contract access management plans
  • Reviewing contracts and updating meta data and access information
  • Establishing contract hierarchies and relationships (Master Agreement, Sub-Agreement, Amendments, Change Controls, Schedules etc.)
  • Highlighting gaps in contracts such as missing amendments or schedules
  • Uploading reviewed information into existing Contract Management System (Or set-up file-sharing system in-case an incumbent system is not available)
  • Handover / knowledge transfer to client’s contract management team

Contract Review

M & A, Ownership Transfer
  • Review the inclusion / suitability of ‘Assignment & novation’ clauses to allow for transfer of rights, benefits, and obligations under a contract to the new controlling entity.
  • Document contracted process for assignment & novation
  • Review clauses around partial carve-out in case of ownership transfer for a specific part of the contracted entity
  • Comparing contract terms & conditions and commercials across multiple contracts with the same supplier(s)
Sourcing Desk
  • Review contracted terms vs standard clauses recommended by client’s legal counsel
  • Document of “out of bounds” deviations and risks (by clause)
  • Document comprehensive action list at a contract level
Other Use Cases
  • Contract consolidation with Incumbent suppliers
  • Reconcile contracted payment terms with supplier master payment terms
  • Enlist contracted rights that need ongoing tracking, such as volume rebates, kickbacks, discount thresholds etc.
  • Create contract renewal calendar(s) to support category planning
Regulatory Changes
  • Review the contracted terms suitability against existing / new regulatory frameworks such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Modern Slavery etc.
  • Document non-suitability / non-compliance including references to clauses that need change

Contract Compliance Monitoring, Auditing, & Expiration Analysis

This service helps sustain the maturity of the contract database and reduce the risk of operating on retroactive contracts. The high-level activities include:

  • Monitoring and updating contract inventory data
  • Identifying, evaluating, and correcting non-complaint contracts by constantly tracking changing global regulatory requirements
  • Performing contract expiration analysis to ensure data correctness and creating custom reports to facilitate tracking of contract life cycles
  • Maintain contract renewal calendars to better facilitate contract consolidations and negotiations
  • Identify and improve contact health of top spend suppliers, business critical suppliers and inter-company agreements in accordance with industry standards