Procurement’s role is evolving rapidly; the tactical team focused on cost reduction has been recast as a strategic entity driving enterprise-wide value. Enterprises worldwide are asking their procurement teams to play a larger and more strategic part in overall corporate growth and deliver sustainable business results. To be able to meet these new expectations, procurement organizations must transform their legacy processes, practices and structures, and align them with the current needs of the enterprise.

As with any transformation program, the real challenge is in the implementation. Organizations often follow the path of building detailed transformation road maps and implementation plans, many times using outside expertise, but fail to realize the benefits in the real world.

S.T.A.R PROCUREMENT adopts a holistic approach toward procurement transformation that focuses on building a high-performance procurement organization in the shortest period of time.

We differentiate ourselves by supporting our clients throughout the transformation journey. In our engagements, we typically run a parallel track of strategic sourcing to help our clients deliver lasting financial results while they build internal capabilities.

Procurement’s role is evolving rapidly; the tactical team focused on cost reduction has been recast as a strategic entity driving enterprise-wide value. Enterprises worldwide are asking their procurement teams to play a larger and more strategic part in overall corporate growth and deliver sustainable business results. To be able to meet these new expectations, procurement organizations must transform their legacy processes, practices and structures, and align them with the current needs of the enterprise.

As with any transformation program, the real challenge is in the implementation. Organizations often follow the path of building detailed transformation road maps and implementation plans, many times using outside expertise, but fail to realize the benefits in the real world.

S.T.A.R PROCUREMENT adopts a holistic approach toward procurement transformation that focuses on building a high-performance procurement organization in the shortest period of time.

We differentiate ourselves by supporting our clients throughout the transformation journey. In our engagements, we typically run a parallel track of strategic sourcing to help our clients deliver lasting financial results while they build internal capabilities.

Passionate About Procurement

Our procurement transformation engagements are led by seasoned procurement experts and supported by a world-class infrastructure comprising our sophisticated methodologies; cloud-native procurement software; a rich knowledge base of best practices, benchmarks, and analytical tools and templates; market intelligence capabilities; and global reach.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

S.T.A.R PROCUREMENT has developed a range of proprietary tools, templates and process playbooks to support process improvement activity.

1. Assessment maps for organizational changes
2. S2P process maps
3. TCO models
4. Assessment frameworks
5. Benchmarks database

S.T.A.R PROCUREMENT is a thought leader in procurement transformation. We have the people, the skills and the technology necessary to take your procurement team to the next level. We’ll not just align you with your goals, rather we’ll go with you that extra mile to see you achieve your goals — just as planned.

Strategy

• Developing an organization-wide procurement strategy aligned to business goals
• Implementing a strategic sourcing road map for significant savings in the short term while achieving corporate goals
• Developing category-specific strategies for ongoing category management
• Creating an assessment framework

People

• Assessing existing organizational effectiveness and competencies
• Designing the right organization structure aligned with the business
• Implementing a robust governance and performance management framework including metrics and scorecards
• Leading the change management program

Process and tools

• Implementing a procurement support infrastructure — acquiring resources and tools
• Assessing and improving processes and policies for all source-to-pay functions
• Reviewing technology requirements and implementing best-fit solutions

How We Create Winning Procurement Strategies

What distinguishes STARs procurement strategy services from those of other procurement strategy providers is our four-point approach. Whether it’s procurement sourcing strategy, procurement cost reduction strategy, or procurement buying channel strategy – this methodology has consistently helped us build successful strategic roadmaps for numerous leading companies across the globe.

Here’s why our strategies work so well:

To improve, and to measure that improvement, you first must know where you presently stand. Assessing the current performance of your procurement organization gives us a clear picture of what the procurement strategy must achieve in accordance with your business goals. It also enables us to compare your procurement operation to that of world-class organizations, proven best practices, and other industry yardsticks to construct the foundations of a solid transition plan.

 

Procurement Benchmarking

Our world-class benchmarking capabilities – supported by extensive data and intellectual property – form the foundation for executing and monitoring fact-based initiatives. Business improvement opportunities are defined, world-class solutions are generated, and the platforms initiative tracking capabilities drive accountability and ensure benefit realisation. Personalised dashboards offer self-service monitoring of key performance measures.

Our sourcing and procurement benchmarking services provide access to the unparalleled benchmarking information and resources, obtained from our repository of processes, benchmark data and business best practices developed from more than 13,000 projects conducted at the world’s leading companies. Our procurement benchmark studies provide a fast and objective way for executives to:

• Understand current capabilities
• Assess performance relative to business value and strategy
• Identify and prioritize improvement opportunities that offer the greatest potential return
• Highlight and address areas of risk
• Plan, manage and accelerate your journey to world-class performance

This performance insight covers more than 1,500 procurement metrics.

Our analysts use sourcing and procurements metrics such as these to calculate world-class performance:

Efficiency

• Functional and process costs and staffing levels
• Overall cost as a percent of spend
• Transaction costs and productivities
• Cycle time
• Cost savings
• Return on investment

Effectiveness

• Access to information
• Percent of staff dedicated to decision-support activities
• Percent of purchase order transactions requiring re-work
• Leverage of technology
• Supplier leverage

Impact beyond sourcing and procurement function borders

Business processes and systems inextricably link your sourcing and procurement function with other enterprise functions. Continuous process improvement in one area may have a ripple effect on others; for example, improved IT controls may result in more reliable data for decision-making in sourcing and procurement.

Our business benchmarking approach examines efficiency and effectiveness not just within the sourcing and procurement function, but also with a view toward the impact across your enterprise.

Our digital benchmarking and continuous process improvement platform, helps ensure your organization captures quantifiable benefits from benchmarking. Quantum Leap streamlines the benchmarking process, enabling you to cut your efforts by half while extending the power of benchmarking into a continuous improvement capability. Its ability to simplify data collection, intelligently assess performance gaps, and generate world-class solutions can enable and accelerate your improvement.

An advanced analysis of historic spend data is the backbone of any strategic sourcing solution. Apart from spend analysis, STAR conducts a thorough review of existing sourcing processes to present an “as is too ideal” road map. This is made possible through relevant inputs from all the business stakeholders.

Procurement teams, higher management and suppliers are actively engaged to draw a detailed long-term savings road map. This is generally followed by identification of categories, with a potential savings and supply market analysis.

STAR’s procurement specialists deliver programs configured to your unique needs. Years of hands-on experience translates into comprehensive services, including:

• Analysis of category data by supplier, business-unit, sub-categories, diversity spend, number of purchase orders
• Identification of synergies between different business units/companies and opportunity for supplier rationalisation
• Identification, quantification, and prioritisation of opportunities, based on potential savings, category complexity, ease of implementation and other change management factors
• Development of a sourcing and procurement transformation road map, resource estimation, timelines for sourcing execution and savings cash flow

Category Planning

A clear, solid process for planning and budgeting forms the base for opportunity assessment and risk management, which is especially vital for commodities like raw materials that are subject to unpredictable market factors.

S.T.A.R Procurements category management consultants and market intelligence teams support our clients’ budgeting processes by constantly tracking key markets, analysing market trends and potential price variabilities. This enables stable, reliable planning for spending in every critical category, whether direct or indirect.

In today’s highly volatile global business and economic environment, enterprises worldwide are facing increased challenges, both externally and internally, to sustain profitable growth.

Under rapidly changing market conditions, the ability to reduce operating costs and allocate budgets correctly is paramount for organizations to survive and grow.

S.T.A.R Procurements strategic cost management services enable leadership teams to reduce expenses in categories that yield little impact and optimize spend in areas that drive sustainable growth. Our strategic cost management programs can help identify and eliminate up to 35 percent of SG&A (Selling, General and Administrative) expenses within a year, freeing up cash that can be invested to drive growth and enhance shareholder ROI.

Traditional approaches to cost reduction are predominantly reactive and focused on “top slicing” across the organization. While these initiatives deliver tactical, within quarter results, they are not sustainable for three key reasons:

1. Focus on “big-ticket items” without understanding of cost, activity and output
2. Fragmented and inconsistent implementation
3. Lack of visibility into results to measure effectiveness

Our sustainable cost reduction approach puts in place five key levers that combine value chain insight and Zero-Based Budgeting across direct, indirect, people and property. S.T.A.R Procurements strategic cost management system can help you:

• Understand what your cost and drivers are (spend and demand)
• Know how activity relates to cost and output (good and bad cost)
• Embed accountability with visibility (aligned sponsors, targets and structure)
• Extract unnecessary cost with the right lever (value chain-defined cost reduction levers)
• Enable control and intervention (category ownership and value delivery)

 

Today’s global and complex procurement models, with thousands of suppliers associated with the organization, make it extremely difficult to identify risks, let alone mitigate them.

Procurement teams are faced with various types of operational, financial, compliance and industry risks. S.T.A.R Procurement helps clients proactively identify third-party risks and manage them more effectively, by developing comprehensive supply risk management strategies to mitigate vulnerability and ensure business continuity.

We typically follow a three-step process to develop a robust third-party risk management strategy for your procurement organization.

Risk Assessment

We start by identifying risks. S.T.A.R Procurement conducts a comprehensive, organization-wide risk assessment to determine what can go wrong. The assessment is done using relevant metrics, multiple sources of input, and augmented data analysis to get an accurate picture of the current situation.

The risks are then scored and prioritized, based on their likelihood of occurrence and potential impact on business.

Risk Mitigation

At S.T.A.R Procurement, we understand that merely having a risk management plan in place isn’t enough. We help you monitor and track the progress of your risk mitigation initiatives to ensure that they work in real-life business situations. STAR offers a wide range of proprietary risk management tools and insightful dashboards tailored to help you interact with your suppliers and other operational stakeholders and make timely, informed decisions. We work closely with our clients to develop various contingency measures and devise business continuity plans based on your organizational requirements.

Governance & Reporting

Once the risks have been identified and prioritized, we develop a comprehensive risk mitigation plan based on short-term, medium-term, and long-term risks. STAR also helps clients identify the right people to implement the risk management plan, assign responsibilities and create escalation mechanisms for these risks.