Many entrepreneurs are unfamiliar with SME consulting. There is a tendency to think that a purchasing consulting service is only aimed at large companies.
SMEs can get the most out of this service, saving a considerable amount of money each time.
With the service of a purchasing and service center, you can save up to 20% on supply contracts, insurance, etc …
Considering the difficulties suffered by small and medium-sized companies, partnering with a consultancy that understands them and proposes appropriate and adapted solutions can be the difference between success and closure.
Advantages Of Consulting For SMEs In Purchasing
Although the advantages are innumerable, we have selected the ten benefits of consulting for SMEs in purchases most important.
Complete Independence From The SME
In addition to savings, the second most important reason for having a consultancy for SMEs is its complete independence.
Being an external and independent company, you can judge the situation objectively. It will not be affected by internal dynamics or by the people responsible for each aspect that can be improved.
You do not owe anything to anyone or any of your suppliers if you provide them with possible solutions.
Your independence is the guarantee of the professionalism of your service. In the case of SMEs, it can be seen very clearly. You have met your goal if you can achieve significant savings on purchases. If it doesn’t, it hasn’t.
Having a specialized consultancy that sees you from the outside can help you find places to save that you had not taken into account in the first place.
Neutrality In Decisions
An audit of a consultancy is entirely neutral. A series of solutions to a problem are proposed, and the employer decides which one to carry out.
As we have discussed previously, customer satisfaction is the priority, and the only important thing is that you can maintain the quality of your purchases and supplies by paying less.
Options such as using private labels for companies in their internal consumption or negotiating packages with a purchasing centre for office supplies or toilet paper, to give two examples, can work perfectly.
Even so, consulting for SMEs gives a diagnosis and proposes solutions, but it will be the entrepreneur who makes the strategic decision.
Benefits Of The Economy of Scale
Do you know the economy of scale? This concept refers to the fact that it is much cheaper in a company after a certain production quota.
It is the same reason why buying wholesale is cheaper than retail.
In purchasing consulting, it is reflected in different situations. For example, it is easier to get cheaper an internet and telephony contract with a company if we contract one hundred or two hundred lines than if we only want four or five.
For this, again, the help of a purchasing centre can be decisive. Both in physical supplies that the company requires according to its activity and in common or usual services such as the same telephony or insurance.
The consultancy for SMEs will study your specific case to see the aspects in which it is possible to save and find the most optimal operation possible.
Also Read: What Is A Marketplace – Strategies For SMEs
Adaptability To Specific Needs
Your company will go through different circumstances throughout its history. Sometimes you will be able to overcome the storm better, and other times you will need help to get there.
Having an SME consultancy will allow it to adapt to the needs of a given moment
It is also an excellent option to prepare for when lean cows arrive. Especially now, we find ourselves on the verge of a new economic crisis.
The consultancy will be adapted to the company’s specific needs at all times so that it can offer you precisely what you need.
Experience In Similar Companies
That experience is a degree is not just a cliché. Any entrepreneur knows that each failure is new learning fixed in his character.
From each failure and success, new elements are learned to account for other situations.
Although the business context is more volatile and changing than ever, experience is still essential to avoid mistakes that others have made before.
The consultancy for SMEs has worked with other companies similar to ours and has been diagnosed with problems, mistakes and solutions.
All this knowledge and different starting situations add up and allow each new consultancy to be better than the previous one.
While an SME may see itself in a particular situation on one occasion, the purchasing consultancy may have dealt with it a hundred times, figuring out the best way to proceed.
Solutions Through Creative Thinking
Shopping can lead us into real mazes in which we feel completely lost.
We may think that cheaper supplies are impossible to find or that we believe that we have optimized everything that can be optimized and we have nothing left to do.
Many times it is about applying creative thinking and finding a solution where it seems that there is none.
Here both experience and the approach used in dealing with the problem come into play.
If we have learned something over the last few years, there is always a way to achieve more significant cost savings without compromising the quality of the product or service offered by the client.
Greater Competitiveness At Lower Cost
Another aspect that must be highlighted in purchasing consultancy is the improvement of the company’s competitiveness.
Suppose we are concerned about our situation in the face of the competition, either because they are eating our ground or because we want to achieve it. In that case, a consultancy for SMEs in purchasing is one of the tools we have at our disposal to achieve a more advantageous position.
Of course, this does not mean that only by optimizing purchases we can stop the competition since other factors come into play here, such as the quality of the product or service we offer, the marketing strategy we use, our branding, etc.
However, it will allow us to have more resources to focus it precisely on those games that need it, improving our competitiveness exponentially.
Here, again, the strategic vision of the entrepreneur comes into play, who must be able to reinvest (if possible) in what will bring the most significant benefit in the long term.
Specific Tools For a More Professional Management
Having the right tools can sometimes be very challenging for a small business. Their costs may be above your budget, especially when your business takes off.
However, by having a consultancy, we can benefit from these types of tools without paying for them.
As with experience or personnel, the tools, programs and algorithms with which our situation in the market will be analyzed will place us in an advantageous position where we would otherwise have no way to position ourselves.
External Purchasing Expert Staff
Something similar happens with the personnel who are in charge of purchases. Your employees are at our service when we have central services and investments.
On many occasions, it is a highly talented human capital that would not be profitable on the payroll. Still, in this way, we can ensure that their experience directly impacts our business.
We will benefit from your talent and your knowledge of the sector, your relationship with suppliers, and the bargaining power you have.
And, all this, spending less than before at the end of the month.
Important Cost Savings
Last but not least, we have to point out the cost savings. The true goal of having a purchasing consultancy is to know what options the company has to spend less on its fixed and variable expenses.
The consultancy for SMEs will offer significant enough savings for your rate poses no problem, but quite the opposite.
It will be an investment that is rewarded from the beginning with sustained cost savings over time so that your company is in a better competitive position in the market.