Corcentric provides practical guidance that will help optimize how you source and contract with independent consultants and professional service providers
Many organizations use professional service firms to support various components of their corporate strategy, from general management consulting to legal services, and even IT. As the use of third-party professional services providers increases, these firms can become strategic allies deeply embedded in a company’s operations. To ensure the maximum value is achieved from these strategic relationships, it is important for a company to select the ideal professional services firm for their unique situation, and to negotiate a best-in-class contract.
As a professional services firm ourselves, Corcentric understands the challenges of dealing with the professional services category, and how necessary they are to your company’s operations. Our purpose is to help your organization sustain a competitive advantage by improving relationships with your incumbent professional services providers, or assisting you in the selection of ones better suited for your needs and corporate culture. Our strategic sourcing services provide the means to deepen relationships with existing suppliers, as well as the market intelligence and supplier identification services necessary to identify best-fit candidates in the market.
Our strategic sourcing team takes a holistic approach to evaluate your organization’s engagements with professional services firms beyond the pricing and performance dimensions. We look at the alignment of the services being provided by each professional services firm, conduct in-depth assessments of the teams and resources assigned to your account, and bring in real-time market intelligence to determine the financial competitiveness of your supplier relationships.
Our suite of strategic sourcing services empowers you to:
- Analyze the professional services marketplace to understand characteristics and identify roadblocks such as international tariffs or regulations.
- Establish professional services skillsets and determine if core competencies and service offerings are tailored to your organization’s needs.
- Evaluate rate cards and pricing of the professional service resources and establish their competitiveness against the market. Determine if offshore or nearshore resources can be applied.
- Identify incentives to improve relationships with your incumbent professional services suppliers, and consolidate your base of professional services firms.
- Leverage any of your organization’s strategic service requirements that may overlap with incumbent suppliers’ capabilities.
- Develop a benchmark for professional services, detailing rates, job descriptions, resource titles, and supplier base to ensure your company is receiving best-in-class service.
- Negotiate and improve the contractual terms and conditions, pricing models (capacity-based vs. fixed pricing) and rates on agreements with professional services providers.
We put our industry expertise, in-house subject matter experts, and proprietary volumes of real-time market data, along with a tailored suite of strategic sourcing services, to work comprehensively addressing each of your needs and requirements. With a model that is flexible and scalable, your organization will be able to reduce the overall costs allocated to professional services while securing favorable contract terms and performance levels and ensuring scope alignment.
Corcentric’s strategic sourcing team can help optimize your professional services portfolio across a wide range of categories, including:
- General Management Consulting
- Internal & Financial Audits
- IT Delivery & IT Strategy
- Marketing & Advertising
- Legal Advisory Services
- Strategy Consulting
- Healthcare Consulting
- Risk Management, Governance & Compliance
- Actuarial Consulting
Contact us today to find out how Corcentric can leverage our strategic sourcing processes and expertise in professional and consulting services to optimize spend and secure favorable contract terms with your organization’s professional services providers.
Strategic Sourcing Marketing Services
As corporate mandates to find savings and reduce costs grow stronger, Strategic Sourcing groups have found themselves working within spend categories that have traditionally been off limits, including Marketing & Sales. Corcentric has found success for our clients by leveraging our negotiation, supplier relationship management, and implementation & administration skills to improve agency relationships for their internal marketing groups. Here’s an example:
A global pharmaceutical company wanted to onboard multiple agencies – creative, digital, public relations – with previous experience marketing a niche product to a small base. Corcentric’s Strategic Sourcing Marketing Services assisted the pharma company’s internal brand team as they navigated the market and identified agencies. We identified ideal suppliers, conducted RFx to shortlist candidates, and coordinated pitch presentations with finalists. With a finalist identified, we leveraged our database of proprietary market intelligence and industry best practices to validate quoted hours and develop an optimal rate card.
Strategic Sourcing IT Services
As technology shifts, hosting options increase, and SaaS implementations continue to rise, many IT departments have found that their traditional hardware-oriented roles are being supplemented, and in some cases replaced, with management duties over third party service providers. As many IT groups do not have the time or the resources to manage these third-party IT professional service firms, it is an avenue where Strategic Sourcing’s skills can be useful. But, like with Marketing, IT has traditionally been an off-limits category and, as a result, may Strategic Sourcing groups may not realize their full value in the category. Corcentric’s IT & Telecommunications strategic sourcing team offers vast experience of how Strategic Sourcing can deliver value to IT groups, the advantages of cross-departmental collaboration, and methods in which the two groups can collaborate to provide value to the organization as a whole.
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