Strategic Sourcing

Creating sustainable profitability improvement.

Strategic Sourcing is ISG’s core competency. We have performed over 1,000 sourcing projects with consistent outcomes. We blend our process expertise with deep category experience to drive extraordinary results in common expenditures such as freight, print, temp labor, telecommunications, or office supplies. (See Expertise for a more extensive list).

What makes us unique is our ability to apply our process to virtually any significant expenditure area. We have sourced chicken for theme parks, custom molded parts for fighter jets, and a 170-country fulfillment infrastructure for print.

Our process begins with heavy data analytics and typically includes hands-on negotiations with suppliers. We help implement any new agreements that result and lay the foundation for on-going world class category management.

ISG performs different types of strategic sourcing projects such as:

Competitive Sourcing: Leveraging facts and logic, ISG manages a fair and objective process designed to identify the best suppliers wherever they may reside and to negotiate the best possible agreement for our clients, considering total cost, quality, service, and other unique factors.
Incumbent Renegotiations: Are the costs with your ‘hard to change’ suppliers fair and competitive? ISG can quickly assess your agreements and leverage a tool kit of strategies to renegotiate your contracts to capture best-in-market pricing and terms.
Consortium Programs: ISG has built and manages a world class Office Supplies consortium with over 100 members. We provide aggregated pricing and terms, and we provide all of the on-going management (See Category Management for more information). In addition, we build custom consortium programs for franchise groups, private equity firms, and other cross-entity organizations.
Complex Decision Support: Have a complex Make / Buy or Outsourcing decision to make? ISG can provide the heavy analytics to fully understand true current costs and get proposals from third parties that are easily comparable. Our Decision Support Services bring clarity to the complex and dramatically lowers risk.
Low Cost Country Sourcing: ISG can search anywhere in the world, and in any domestic region, for the best suppliers to fill your requirements.

When appropriate, we leverage our deep expertise in eSourcing and Reverse Auction tools.

Definition