In these times of inflation and price rises, you might think that what you need to build up is your category’s muscle like: your buyer power or your ability to hold steady to the contract terms. Today, however, managing a category isn’t always about strength alone. It is also about flexibility and the ability to adapt.
Using strong arm tactics is no longer a guaranteed way to put a good deal in place. Often, in our categories, we lock into specific ways of thinking. We think that the tactics we’ve used to good effect will work again now. Of course that might be true because we’ve faced inflation and the threat of recession before.
But it’s more likely that these times of changes to economic and trade dynamics mean we need to think differently and seek out something new. Often ideas can come from other areas of the business or different categories rather than focusing on the familiar.
Would something that works well for a direct category work for indirects too?
We might decide that we need to develop dual sourcing for our category. Perhaps this is something that we’ve not done before. A good place to look for a tried-and-tested approach is a category where they’ve been using this approach for years.
How did they do it? What contract structure do they use? How do they manage risk? What KPIs can we set up to measure success?
So, it’s important not only to keep yourself focused on your own category, but also to expand your horizon and scan categories from across the business for ideas.
It’s amazing how flexible you can be when you raise your gaze!
All our Categorypalooza sessions will feature different categories and perspectives. We’ll be joined by panel members from our event partners Fine Tune, ProcurementIQ and SpendPros who bring a wide range of experience and points of view.
And because Categorypalooza is run through the live digital platform StreamGo, you’ll have the opportunity to engage directly with other attendees and the session speakers during the event.
Click here to register for this free Art of Procurement event, which takes place on August 11th from 11am to 2pm ET.
