C-parts - Current state of the art & Existing concepts
C-parts are characterized by a low procurement value and a high procurement effort.
The management of C parts are for many organizations a major headache. From management perspective it is "just" c-parts, which are least important in the ABC-Analysis. Still these products are required for the organization to run smoothly. In past times management was not willing to invest into digitalization of these process ecosystems as the return on invest way abysmal.
There are two concepts for managing c-parts. (1) Central procurement and (2) letting the employees handle it fully decentralized. Both approaches are suboptimal and deliver certain problems to the organization, like a lack of transparency on what happens to the goods once they have arrived. The centralized procurement may bring benefits on the procurement side like better pricing. The decentralized procurement does have these benefits and can be very efficient but has a huge lack of control on the spending side. transparency on the received goods
As a result most mid size companies take the centralized approach, although knowing of the downsides of this centralistic approach. In these scenarios the procurement is done by using the standard purchasing tools offered by the ERP available in these companies. All decentralized demand is forwarded to the central procurement department causing a lot of overhead work with these c parts. In this situation another way of healing the biggest issues is to attach shops of selected providers to their ERP solution directly, e.g. like punch-out catalogs. This is a concept developed by SAP in the 1980s as Open Catalog Interface in 2003. It works through e-commerce websites operated by of vendors to purchase products. This approach works for most basic products like office material although it means even for these product groups dependency risks and costly integration projects for each new supplier.
With ZUGSEIL BEST we offer these organizations an approach for managing and procuring c parts with less tiime and high level of process automation.
Example categories
C-parts ranges from:
- Personal Equipment
- Uniforms
- Personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Mobile management
- Workplace equipment
- Computers / ICT
- Work tools (e.g. standard tools, medical kits)
- Office material
- Project equipment, e.g for construction sites
- Other Assets