How to Manage Procurement Risk with a Group Purchasing Organization

By Mackenzie Oakley | June 28, 2021

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a procurement expert on your team, dedicated to creating and implementing a preemptive strategy that could reduce risk and save money? It’s possible when businesses decide to partner with a group purchasing organization (GPO) like Una.

Una has the best contracts in place that offer significant savings. Our team is knowledgeable and acts as your partner in procurement, bringing a level of expertise and dedication to your organization’s goals without any additional fees or costs.

Procurement’s role within a company is to provide a predictable and reliable supply of the external resources needed for functionality. Traditionally, it pertains to supplier management in a supply-chain context, but times have changed, and with it, responsibilities.

Today, procurement encompasses a broad range of responsibilities, and with great responsibility comes great risk.

How to Manage Procurement Risk

Risks like the unreliable supply of services, loss of relationship or influence with suppliers, inability to meet demand, avoidable increase in purchasing costs, legal implications, or cash flow issues could impact your company’s goals and bottom line.

Therefore, it is imperative for you to have a secure procurement strategy in place to reduce risk and be successful.

Luckily, when you partner with a GPO like Una, we don’t just respond to the effects of risk. We proactively play a strategic role in procurement planning to mitigate risk altogether and ensure success for our members.

Here are the steps we take to help manage procurement risk.

Identify risk

While you cannot eliminate risk entirely, you can detect and reduce potential risk. Our years of expertise in all types of businesses and experience with unique procurement needs can help you to understand your areas of risk better.

Establish a strategy

Once you’ve identified your company’s unique procurement risk, sit down with your team and form a solid long-term strategy to reduce risk. When drilling down an effective strategy, it is helpful to have a procurement partner like Una at the table to standardize the process for a cohesive strategy.

procurement playbook

Implement and monitor

Now that you’ve laid a foundation, it’s time to do the work. Put that plan into play and track your progress as you go. We offer our members access to innovative technology and analytical tools to streamline the process, giving you clean trackable data for your procurement strategy.

Analyze and optimize

Monitoring your spend allows you to take a look back at a given time and improve where necessary moving forward. We partner with our members to analyze potential savings opportunities and evaluate competitive purchasing behavior to ensure procurement is running as efficiently as possible.

Risk Management and More

GPOs work as an extension of your internal procurement department as an additional resource for efficient sourcing, supplier and contract management. We will help you identify the risks associated with your acquisition plans, establish a credible and reliable long-term strategy and help facilitate implementation through contract negotiation, cost comparison, and finally analysis and optimization on future strategy.

Learn more about reducing your procurement risk by partnering with a GPO as well as the other benefits of becoming a member today.

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