Supplier Search Services from Corcentric

Corcentric’s supplier search experts can help your procurement team compile and validate a list of suppliers who indicate they possess the products, services, and capabilities to meet your business’ needs – faster and with better quality than your procurement team could achieve on their own.

Perhaps the most obvious step in the research portion of the strategic sourcing lifecycle is supplier identification. It simply would not be possible to engage in a strategic sourcing effort without a supply base to source from. However, many times this step is not given the level of attention required. Identifying suppliers can be a tedious task—there is a wealth of information available on the Internet, but often this information is overwhelming and difficult to sort through. That’s where Corcentric’s Supplier Identification experts can help, providing you the resource support and market visibility to identify suppliers that can meet quality and service-level requirements for the goods or services being purchased.

Our sourcing strategy design experts will help you to remain flexible and develop an awareness of the supply base’s needs and wants just as much as your own. Doing so will motivate the supply base to invest far more time and effort in winning your business.

Corcentric’s proven process for supplier search includes:

• Collecting specifications and requirements to form the right market baskets
• Understanding both the process to create or deliver the required product or service as well as previous efforts to source the product/service
• Utilizing Corcentric’s internal knowledge base, partner network, subject matter expertise, and additional research as needed to identify suppliers and providers located in the desired geographical areas that meet the pre-defined capabilities.
• Calling and speaking with each supplier individually in a Request for Information (RFI) process to validate gathered data, specific technical capabilities identified during the initial scoping phase of the project, and the capacity to take on new business prior to further consideration. We also use this opportunity to initiate the supplier relationship process with a specific contact person for both the business development and technical sides of the partnership.
• Securing NDAs with potential suppliers to not only validate they can meet or exceed requirements before further consideration, but assure the integrity of intellectual property and confidential information
• Building a supplier matrix which includes a summary of each supplier’s reported annual sales, facility/service locations, number of employees, company and facility size, capabilities with specific limitations on production or service, and industry focus for ease of comparison. We review the supplier matrix with the client to ensure all questions are answered, to identify any follow-up action items, and develop a roadmap for the next phases of the project.

Thorough supplier identification early in the strategic sourcing process is important, because qualified suppliers can actually provide you with enhanced market intelligence that may not be available to you on your own. Contact Corcentric’s Supplier Identification Team today to begin acquiring this market intelligence for yourself.