With every New Year, organizations enforce procurement & sourcing teams to adapt to changes and absorb shifts in the global markets in order to stay competitive. As workloads and responsibilities continue to increase, here’s a 16 point checklist for Procurement Practitioners alike:

1. Review your existing sourcing process and implement a new efficiency
2. Improve stakeholder visibility in your e-sourcing module
3. Implement a step to increase process adoption in the team
4. Analyze big data for your domain and summarize key findings to follow
5. Tweak your contract lifecycle management process
6. Set up the contract repository if you don’t have one. If you do, ensure data is refreshed
7. Figure out the compliance rate for your contract management and take corrective actions
8. Initiate approval workflow modules on mobile devices for the middle management and above
9. Define steps to manage and capture accurate Supplier Information
10. Design a performance score KPI/surveys for suppliers and rate them in other words map a Supplier Performance Management model
11. Foster supplier collaboration to drive significant cost savings
12. Set a deadline to cleanse or classify your spend data
13. Embrace the upside to automating and improving existing process be it supplier management, eSourcing or contract management
14. Calculate the percentage of savings realized last year and percentage of spend sourced. The best-in-class teams realize savings of 6% or more and source 40% or more of their spend
15. Upscale the team’s talent with new certifications and improve the team’s performance
16. Innovate

Integrating technology with strategic sourcing, contract management & supplier management streamlines processes whilst improving overall efficiency for procurement & sourcing teams. No program can be considered truly “strategic” if it does not have automated technology in aid.

“Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.” – Anthony Robbins

So what would you incorporate in your action plan for 2016?

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