Continuous Improvement

Procurement should be continuously pursuing cost and efficiency gains across procurement, the wider organisation(s) and the supply chain, through activities such as:

  • Working innovatively and collaboratively with suppliers and stakeholders/business partners to identify opportunities for supply chain improvements, and putting action plans in place to fully explore and deliver the identified opportunities
  • Measuring every aspect of procurement from source to pay and where possible, benchmarking against similar organisations

Creating a formal Continuous Improvement Team / Working Group to regularly meet and review on-going initiatives and identify new opportunities can be a good step towards increasing awareness and engagement.  While having a process in place to allow informal ideas to be raised and recorded from all areas of the Organisation will be of benefit. 

Effective contract and Supplier Management (C&SM) is a fundamental driver of continuous improvement from a procurement / supply chain perspective. Where an organisation has a fragmented or informal approach to C&SM it may be necessary to build a business case to lay out the risks and missed opportunities in this approach, and to highlight the benefits of embedding C&SM across the organisation. A Business Case template to help justify the case for embedding C&SM can be used.