Procuri Inc., the Atlanta-based spend analysis and supply management software company, recently released its e-book, "The 100 Greatest Supply Management Tips of All Time!" for public consumption.

Procuri’s senior vice president of marketing, Tim Minahan, compiled and edited the e-book as part of an ongoing company initiative to "foster best practice exchange, elevate the supply management discipline and make supply excellence accessible to the broader market."

Noted Minahan: "The tips included in this eBook are not complex. In fact, many of the recommendations can be implemented without additional budget dollars or resources. The tips allow any organization, regardless of size, to begin driving improvements in supply management performance today."

As Healthcare Purchasing News continues its 30th anniversary celebration, we thought we’d share 30 of those tips with you here. To find the other 70, visit Procuri’s Website at www.procuri.com or visit Procuri’s e-book site at www.topsupplytips.com, which also includes links to case studies, reports and online tools, as well as a contest. Procuri has launched a global search for the "greatest supply management tip." You can submit your best tip by July 31. The winning tip will be announced October 9.

Finally, don’t forget to vote in HPN’s 30th annual survey. We’d like to hear your nominations for such categories as the most influential professionals in healthcare supply chain management; most significant news events; biggest threat to supply chain management that never happened; most innovative clinical procedure, product and service; hottest supply chain management fad and most intriguing business deal. Be sure to vote early and often by visiting THIS LINK. We’ll start announcing the results in the July edition of HPN.

Without further delay…

Avoid conflict.
Start with high impact, low friction areas, such as strategic sourcing, which drives measurable savings, but doesn’t require multiple functions. Use early wins to expand your initiative.

Four is the magic number.
To maximize competition, include at least four suppliers in every negotiation.

Create a crisis.
Whenever possible, link your supply management initiative to a top corporate goal or challenge, such as complying with SOX.

Start your own news network.
Use multiple channels to communicate the intent, approach and results of supply management initiatives. Channels include company newsletters, presentations at company meetings, and "deal sheets" summarizing sourcing projects or contracts.

Become multi-lingual.
Translate the benefits of your supply management initiative into the other group’s language. Example: When sourcing advertising, don’t highlight cost savings. Instead, tell how you’ll ensure brand integrity, speed turnaround times, and stretch their budget dollars.

Hang out with losers.
Take the time to debrief suppliers that fail to win your business. The best will use your advice to develop new capabilities and tactics that meet your future needs.

Keep your winners.
Retain your top talent with competitive pay rates, special projects, training and mentoring programs, a clear career path, and work-life balance options.

Recruit strangers.
Hire supply managers with unconventional skills such as finance, engineering and technology.

Empower suppliers.
Use a Web-based portal to empower suppliers to self-register and manage their own profile, capabilities, and certification information. This improves your productivity and cuts supply risks.

Incent the right behavior.
To foster support for your supply management initiatives, ensure measures and incentives are aligned to induce your intended outcome. Example: To drive adoption of supply or contract management technology, make usage part of the individual buyer or contract manager’s scorecard. Link the scorecard to employees’ personal bonus.

Fire your best people.
Remove your best team members from their day jobs and put them in charge of your most important supply management improvement initiatives. This ensures program success and helps retain talent.

Cut communication lines.
Stop supplier attempts to subvert sourcing procedures by cutting off unauthorized communications to influential personnel. Shut off new business to any violators.

Analyze before auctioning.
To determine what to auction, ask: Can you define clear specifications? Is there a competitive supplier pool? Is the spending or unit volume significant? Are you prepared to change suppliers? If yes, auction it.

Define the rules of engagement.
To guard against post-event bartering in supplier negotiations, use prerequisites and knockout questions to ensure that suppliers agree to all conditions prior to the negotiation.

Ask "Why not?"
Make category managers start from a position of, "Why can’t this spend category be e-sourced?" This discipline will ensure consistent and documented sourcing methods are used.

Run two online sourcing projects.
Prove the impact of supply management improvement by conducting at least two e-sourcing projects. E-sourcing yields 14 percent cost savings for first-timers. Early wins can be used to secure support and funding for broader initiatives.

Come armed with facts.
Top executives, particularly CFOs, want to know how your supply management program is going to hit the bottom line and when it’s going to get there. Ensure you have visibility into spending, compliance and performance data. Report how this intelligence links to corporate goals and profits.

Look inward before outsourcing.
Document and standardize processes before outsourcing spend categories or procurement activities. Design internal capabilities to manage an outsourcing service provider
relationship.

Get auction clairvoyant.
Predict auction success by requiring suppliers to complete a detailed pre-bid RFP response. Doing so projects auction results and ensures suppliers understand your requirements.

Work both ends of the organization.
Execs can provide the budget, resources, and policy changes required to get a program going. But success will be determined by stakeholder support and adoption.

Give frequent report cards.
Establish standard, easy-to-understand metrics for measuring supplier performance. Share performance scorecards with suppliers frequently, giving them ample chance to refute and improve their scores.

Harvest supplier innovation.
Establish formal channels (such as a Web-based portal) and procedures to receive, evaluate, implement and measure results of cost-reduction or improvement suggestions from suppliers.

Get classified.
Automate spend data classification to uncover hidden opportunities for better spend leverage, compliance and supplier rationalization.

Find hidden experts.
Get a crash course in new spend categories from functional stakeholders who understand cost drivers and innovation in those areas, such as IT or Marketing.

Share risks with suppliers.
Ensure that your contracts include clauses for suppliers to share risks in areas of payment terms, currency fluctuations, capital investments and freight surcharges.

Hold an open house.
Make a practice of visiting successful supply management organizations at their locations. Ask for a presentation of their organizational structure, training and supplier development programs, key performance indicators and technology approaches. Be sure to return the favor by hosting others at your location.

Reap what you sow.
Supply and contract managers focus considerable effort on negotiating the best deal, but many times, they overlook procedures for ensuring compliance after the deal is done. Get stakeholder involvement (and compliance commitment) at the beginning of the sourcing process. Establish channels to inform stakeholders of the pricing and terms of the new agreement and how they can order from it. Monitor transactional and pricing compliance with the contract. Report compliance performance on a periodic basis – fingering areas of non-conformance. (If possible, get execs to put teeth in compliance policies.) Be sure to align your team’s incentives to actual contract compliance – not just negotiated savings.

Speak CFO.
Link supply improvements to the metrics that matter most to your CFO.

Don’t neglect your soft side.
Wring hard-dollar impact from "soft cost" savings. Automating sourcing, contracting and procurement execution shortens process cycles 50 percent–70 percent. Cycle time improvements free you up to apply strategic sourcing or contracting principles to more and a wider range of spend. Example: For a company with $1 billion in annual revenues, cycle time savings from e-sourcing alone can yield more than $42 million in additional hard-dollar savings.