Revision as of 18:39, 1 October 2017

The procurement process Abstract Each project needs a certain amount of resources. Usually not all of these are already owned or available to the project companies, therefore, the organization will purchase some sources or services from other firms. In a project, the statement of work is the main input for the definition of the needed resources. The project team will examine this document and decide which of the item can be found or produced internally and which one purchase. Once defined the whole resources to acquire externally these are communicated to the procurement function. The procurement function oversees the search for the right seller for each specific resource or purchase category. For this purpose, buyers and procurement manager start communicating with potential suppliers through exchange of procurement document. Typically, each document reflects a stage in the buying process. At each stage, the buyer and the vendor require and provide different information. The first contacts between procurement and vendor are aimed to establish the supply scope and expectation. When the process evolves, the communication switch on the specific qualities of the request (and offer). These documents are sent to all potential supplier by different channel, depending by the size of the purchasing and selling company and their policies. During this process, contractors and buying organization negotiate the contractual form that will regulate the provision. The choice of contract typology, from the buyer organization side, has the target to avoid, mitigate or transfer the risk to the vendor.

Verify need to purchase, Make or Buy

The first step of the procurement process is to assess if there is actual need for purchasing. The company could in fact own internally the necessary resource to fulfill the work. However, these resources should be available in the time and amount defined by the project schedule. If project organization has no availability of the required means to complete the work it will effectuate a buy decision. In this case, it will follow a lease or purchase decision, to decide if acquire temporary or permanently the asset.

Knowledge source

When the organization states the need for acquisition of external assets, it has to acquire internal and external knowledge about the market and the delivery mode the needed items.

Experts

Different kind of expertise may contribute in defining purchase strategy. Experienced buyers are a good source of market knowledge. While the legal department can help defining the clause and the liability to achieve the desired provision. The internal client, the person or department in the project organization that demands the purchase, provides the specifications.

Market research and meetings

Market research consist in examining existing suppliers’ capabilities. This can be done by attending sector convention, examining review from internet or other buyers. Purchasing objectives can be adapted for leveraging mature technologies. The higher level of knowledge will be acquired through the bidding process by communicating directly with the bidders. We will examine this process in the following sections.

Definition of the required items, Statement of work

The statement of work (SOW) is a document that summarizes the task and the target to fulfill in a project. The SOW is settled from the project scope and define the part of the project scope that has to be included in the supply contract. A procurement SOW is comprehensive of detailed information about^[1]:

The procurement SOW includes also an overview collateral services required, such as performance reporting or post-project operational support for the procured item. In some application areas, there are specific content and format requirements for a procurement SOW. The procurement SOW can be revised and refined as required as it moves through the procurement process until incorporated into a signed agreement. Essentially, the SOW includes all the information for the need item in relation with the project characteristics. By examining it, a potential seller should be able to asses if he can provide the required product or service. If all project organization should define a procurement state of work. Each company can establish its own purchasing policies.

Identifying the supplier

When a company is about starting a new project one of the first activity is estimate the resources needed for it. Documents as activity list and activity attributes give an overview of all the necessary resources. If the company has no similar project in his portfolio is likely that the procurement has no contact with the companies providing product and services required by the project. For this reason, the first document that the procurement function issues is a request for information.

Mapping of the market, Request For Information (RFI)

[[File::StateOfMaineDataCenter.jpeg|thumb|400px|State of Maine RFI to identify possible contractor for a data center]] The main purpose of RFI is to gather information. This is particularly helpful if a single or few suppliers are expected to provide a large amount of services and materials for a single project. RFI can be very beneficial in scanning the market for product and services providers for long-term supply agreements. The Internal client, the person or business unit requiring the purchase, is responsible to provide the technical specification or to write the Request for Information itself. The document is received by the procurement function that is appointed to make it available to potential suppliers.

The document is published, or sent to a broad base of potential supplier, on channels defined by the buying company policy. For many suppliers replying to RFI is a chance to promote their product and services. Consequently, companies may includes special incentives and discount prices in their quotations^[2]. By responding to a request for information a business is showing its interest in meeting the needs of the company that sent out the request. Procurement may use RFIs to list the products and services and require a first quotation. The pricing obtained at this stage are used to assess the different company price level. This information can be used later in the negotiation phase and should not be considered for buying decision. The quotation provided at RFI level will not necessary reflect the final ones, as suppliers will redefine it as they get more information. Through analysis of RFI: responses, strategic options, lower cost alternatives, and cost reduction opportunities may be identified. The different vendors that reply to the request are inserted in a database. This is used for future supplier negotiations on the quality and the price of the supply.

Aligning buyer and supplier expectation, Request For Proposal (RFP)

The main outcome of the RFI is a first overview of the potential suppliers. At this point, the procurement communicates its willingness to consider a partnership and the availability of funds. This is done through a request for proposal. The document stated the bidding process and contract terms, and provides guidance on how the bid should be formatted and presented. The request describes the solution need by the company and the criteria on which each proposal is graded. Requests for proposals can include a statement of work describing tasks to be performed by the winning bidder and a timeline for providing finished work. An effective RFP can also contain information about the characteristic required from the supplier, as these should be compatible with the buying organization objectives. A request for proposal for a specific program may require the company to review the bids to not only examine their feasibility but also the health of the bidding company and the ability of the bidder to actually do what is proposed^[3]. The structure and format of the response is to the discretion of the suppliers. The originality supplier shows in building their proposals may be used to distinguish one from another.

Benchmarking and selection, Request For Quotation (RFQ)

Once the range of suppliers for the desired item is available, buyers aim to collect more precise information to make a comparison between the different offers. To make this possible a new document, called Request for Quotation is sent to all the suppliers that displayed interest for the RFI, or that are already present in the database. It is desirable for the procurement to set different parameters and define the relevant specifications. Consequently the RFQ will contain a detailed list or description of all relevant parameters of the intended purchase. In this way, all the potential suppliers will have to reply following a defined framenwork including information such as^[4]:

If this is done correctly it will be easier to compare the goodness of the different firms with the same scale. The offers replying an RFQ is received in many case in the form of a sealed bid, in one or more submission rounds. All the answer to the RFQ are evaluated by the same criteria. Essentially, key parameters will represent hard constrains. For instance, external IT contractors hired from a consultancy firm will be required to have specific competences and know particular programming language. All the offers that does not respect these constrain will not be considered. If the item purchased is a commodity, price per item or per unit of service will result the main evaluation criteria, otherwise it will be considered the tradeoff between the quotation and the other parameters. Procurement department makes the final supplier decision following a comparison and analysis of the RFQ responses for negotiation benchmarking advantage.

Get the best available provision, Request For Tender (RFT)

Purchase of extended of large amount of product or services may require a tender. A tender is published the channel determined for the purpose. Larger companies has their own platforms or employee third parts tender platform^[5]. The RFT should contained well defined specification for the requested item. The level of detail of RFT should mirror the one of the RFI. Sometimes the buying organization makes available ad-hoc forms that the bidders must fill and submit to participate in the tender. If the buyer misses to specify exactly what his organization need, the quality of the resulting bids will be affected by the supplier interpretation of the request. Tenders are an appropriate tool when the requirement to acquire a specific product or services is known with satisfactory advance compared to their actual employment time, defined in the project schedule.

Contract categories

Once the buyer, or the project team in absence of a procurement function, has identified the most appropriate vendor the two parts sign an agreement. Skilled procurement professional are able to negotiate the best contractual form for their organization. Each contract type spares differently the responsibilities of the two parts. Also the remuneration criteria differs from agreement category. Companies have different policies about who will sign the contract on the company’s behalf. Some policies defines a maximum contractual value that each buyer can sign for. There exists three main categories or contract used for supply agreement:

• Fixed-Price contracts

Contracts typologies divided by billing mode and fee definition

Fixed-Price contracts assign a fixed total price for the provision of product of services. This type of agreement can include financial incentives when some target performance of quality or schedule are achieved. The contracts is binding for the supplier to provide all the items agreed, penalties are applied if the terms are not respected.

• Cost-reimbursable contracts

In cost-reimbursable contracts the clients refund the seller for the cost sustained over the project. In addition, the customer will provide the supplier with a fee, representing the vendor’s profit. The contract may include clause for financial reward in case of outstanding expenditure or time performance.

• Time and material contracts

Time and material contracts are used when it’s know the typology of,material or staff that must be outsourced, but is not know the amount,needed or the time horizon of the provision. They are particularly,useful to employ external staff for a defined period.

The table shows a synthetic overview of the types of contract we find in the three categories:

Purchase Orders

A purchase order it's a schematic document listing the typology and the number of purchased goods or services

When a company need to purchase commodities on recurring basis, the term and conditions of the trade are negotiated by the two part and then stated into a framework agreement. In this way, all the future purchase of the item listed in the agreement will be regulated by it. When this agreement is in place, the buyer can release a purchase orders (PO), a document containing the types and the amount of purchased goods or services. When the supplier accepts it, the purchase orders becomes a legally binding document. For that moment the buying organization will be liable to pay for the supply. Once the vendor receives the payment, he releases an invoice. This can be used by the buying company for controlling purpose by making it match with the corresponding PO.

Risk and pitfalls

As many other project management activities, procurement's activities include several risk and pitfalls.These can involve the internal procurement process, the definition of supply specifications and delivery modes or lack of strategic prospective.

Meet requirement for negotiation time

Not always the required purchases are available in project planning documents. Many times, internal clients manifest the need to acquire external capabilities with little or no advance to the procurement. In this case, buyers have little bargaining power toward any potential seller as there is no time for an effective negotiation. As result, should be responsibility of the interested business unit or process owner to communicate the buying decision to the procurement. Only in this way is possible to achieve buying performance through negotiation.

Get what is needed

In many procurement categories, especially the services one, it is particularly challenging to define what is needed. Contracts always state the duration of service provision but not always are clear about how the service is delivered and what services are included. To overcome the possibility of lacking service level, buyers should negotiate with vendors the inclusion of service KPI into the contract. This is usually the case for IT service on Cloud where uptime is an essential metric. The solution is identifying the metrics that characterize the service as ensure they are included and set in contracts.

Define pricing policies

Another arising issue of IT service contract is the vagueness of pricing over time. Many services are offered at favorable initial prices. Companies can be tented to subscribe for the services. However, if buyer fail to negotiate a long term pricing profile suppliers will have the chance to increase billing prince extensively^[6]. Service providers can make leverage on the technical lock up and the switching cost for increase their revenue.

Supply relationship management

Supply relationship management is the activity of connecting the interest of the organization and its extended supply chain. Tradition supplier relationship between a company and its supplier have tactical of operational prospective. SRM starts with finding the right stakeholders and align strategic objectives. This kind of approach is particularly beneficial for long term supply relationship as it can bring^[7]

• Efficiency improvement
• Cost reduction
• Risk mitigation
• Increased potential for innovation

Naturally is not possible to establish this kind of relation with all the supplier. It is necessary to categorize suppliers on their strategic importance to the organization. In this way the focus will be directed only toward the most relevant suppliers.

References

1. ↑ http://www.humanwareonline.com/project-management/center/sow-statement-of-work/
2. ↑ http://www.method123.com/template--rfi.php#!prettyPhoto
3. ↑ http://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/request-for-proposal.asp
4. ↑ https://www.negotiations.com/articles/procurement-terms/
5. ↑ https://www.ariba.com/
6. ↑ http://www.zdnet.com/article/cloud-computing-pricing-beware-the-bill-shock/
7. ↑ Deloitte: Supplier Relationship Management (SRM), Redefining the value of strategic supplier collaboration (2015), https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/operations/Supplier_Relationship_Management_2015.pdf