Author Archives: Paladin Associates - Rick Schlegelmilch
Employee benefit plans are a critical component of a company’s ability to attract and hold talent. This sacred task often puts price negotiation with service providers in the hands of outside HR consultants and internal Human Resource specialists. While these people have good intentions, they are often ill equipped to work the cost AND service angle. All Drug plan administrators have plans to help companies control drug USAGE but they rarely address the sourced COSTS of the medications, outside of … More
A structured competitive bid will generally result in better pricing than one-on-one negotiations with suppliers. In one clear example, a client had recently secured a 20% cost reduction in facilities services from the incumbent suppliers using face-to-face negotiations. Nonetheless, we recommended creating a structured RFP to include multiple suppliers as well as the incumbents. We identified an array of 12 qualified local and national suppliers. We developed a detailed scope with floor plans, unusual surface descriptions, number of bathrooms/fixtures, etc. … More
Cost reduction can be tough in engineering dominated environments where the intangibles of electrons, pixels and band width can render seemingly workable devices incompatible. New suppliers often face the barrier of a qualification process involving their processes, quality (ISO) and environmental (RoHS/EPA) standards. A Sourcing Professional must work especially hard to bring value to purchases made for technical products. An oft neglected supply management task is tracking your existing suppliers’ changing technical capabilities. Suppliers often qualify for one, or a … More
Every cost element a company faces these days needs to be examined and, where possible, paradigms broken on how we do business. You have to ask… Facing a new cost reduction engagement with a client in a major metropolitan area, our consulting group needed reasonably priced accommodations at a reliable hotel. As one of many winter sun destinations, seasonal room rates were the norm for our client’s locale. We contacted many local lodging providers about servicing our needs for the … More
