Service Delivery & Optimization
The optimization and strategic management of purchasing functions is critical to a manufacturer’s success. With some 50-60% of a buyer’s time spent on clerical/tactical tasks, purchasing departments often don’t get to the strategic part of the job – leveraging cost, quality and delivery – or end up with highly paid commodity managers spending too much time and effort on low-value-add tasks.
As clerical/tactical tasks grow – from capacity studies, minority sourcing reports, and counting supplier codes, to compliance reporting for customs, IMDS and hazardous materials reporting – purchasing departments need optimized business processes to remain competitive.
The Purchasing Authority’s Approach to Services
APD’s Purchasing Authority helps manufacturers achieve improved business results and cost savings with a three-pronged optimization approach consisting of Consulting Services, ProcureForce and Tailored Business Process Services.:
- Consulting Services – We help enterprises identify the optimal business model combining shared service concepts, process development, and offshore practices. We focus on the development and optimization of captive or internal service organizations.
Our approach is to understand the roles, responsibilities and objectives of an organization to develop the right mix of tasks to transition into a shared service environment based on value-add, required skills, and industry knowledge. These resources can support business cycles including source to pay and quote to launch.
Over time, our shared service team will develop knowledge, improve processes, and develop tools and capabilities to take on more than just the transactional duties.
By treating business processes like manufacturing processes and using six sigma and similar tools, we can reduce non-value-add costs and focus on more strategic, high-level targets.
Our objective is to take secondary or non-core tasks and concentrate them in a low-cost region, enabling key knowledge workers to focus on high value, strategic objectives.
- Tailored Business Process Services – Clients may need broader support services, for example, in IT or finance. The Purchasing Authority designs strategic approaches to meet specific needs, using offshore or onshore resources.
We also lead engagements to evaluate alternate outsourcing partners to develop the best model with the best value to support the client’s objectives.
We live up to our goal to be your Purchasing Authority by partnering with our offshore or onshore resources to fit your needs or helping to identify alternate partner opportunities.
Change Management and Supply Chain Focus
We structure optimization initiatives to manage change and maximize supply chain performance. Our optimization plans:
- Use shared services principles to develop the best fit for the customer. We bring our knowledge in supply chain processes, master data management, and manufacturing to optimize your organization.
- Draw on extensive purchasing and procurement experience in manufacturing enterprises, including OEMs, tier-one and tier-two automotive suppliers and small and mid-sized organizations.
- Offer flexibility to use your or our low-cost resources.
- Provide a go-to partner with extensive manufacturing expertise.