There are many areas of responsibilities in the supply chain. For example, a purchasing department might have positions for a secretary, an analyst, an inventory control clerk, buyer(s), contract coordinator, audit, quality control, transportation, logistics, warehouse, shipping, receiving and more. Depending on your company size you might be responsible for some or all of the above job functions!

Purchasing can no longer be stuffed into a dark corner with a phone, fax and internet connection. In other words, it is no longer considered an isolated function. It must work closely with both internal and external clientele. Internal would be your user groups and external would be your suppliers. For the supply chain to be effective and achieve a competitive edge all these pieces must work closely together.

Lets break down all those above job functions into two groupings.

1)    Logistics
–    The incoming movement of goods from the source (the supplier) to your operation
–    Inventory – management of stock levels, warehousing and storage
–    Distribution of stock items to your user group or customers

So transportation, warehouse, shipping, receiving, inventory control all appear to fit category #1

2)    Purchasing
–    Procurement of goods and services
–    Contracts and commercial terms
–    Vendor Management

Purchasing buyers, contract coordination, audit, quality might more fit category #2

Many in purchasing would Read the rest of this entry

The Request for Quote (RFQ) process varies from company to company depending on your spend and the amount of staff designated to the procurement function.

If you are lucky enough to have a RFQ Software platform integrated into your computer operating system you are one of the fortunate ones. These companies have software which allow the purchasing department to quickly and easily turn an electronic requisition (request from the user group) into a RFQ and spin it out to three or more vendors for P&D (Price and Delivery) without leaving their chair. Most companies do not have this type of functionality and they in turn expect Buyers to retype, cut and paste, email or fax a hard copy to vendors for a quote. In these instances, much of your potential savings could in turn be chewed up by the labor costs dedicated to requesting the quotes.  There are better ways.

The RFQ is the Buyers way of determining present market costs and conditions for item which are needed to run the organization they work for. Typically they are looking for price, delivery, quality, payment terms and specifications on their needs. Often these needs are dictated by a user group or another department which is looking for product for maintenance, repair or operating (MRO) issues.  This is not the only instance where a RFQ is used, this same user group might be looking at a capital purchase of new equipment or other service related needs. The RFQ is purchasing way of keeping a handle on costs for goods and services.

Having a RFQ template for these different types of purchases will help you expedite the time you spend on acquisition and reducing acquisition costs makes your department more effective and lowers cost.  Let us help…we have many different RFQ type forms and templates in our bundles as well we are an eProcurement or eSourcing software provider by way of our RFQPro Software Platform.

If you subscribe to our mailing you will receive our FREE welcome pack of templates which include a couple of standard RFQ forms along with an invitation to bid letter. They are instantly delivered upon confirmation of your address.  If you want more robust RFQ Templates, we recommend you buy either the Purchasing Manager or Mega Pack Bundle. Both contain many sample RFQ forms which can be quickly modified to meet your specific needs to avoid having to start from scratch.