Patent ID: 7302405

Claim:
A sourcing and procurement method for developing and managing sourcing and procurement operations of an organization in an accelerated manner, the sourcing and procurement method comprising the steps of: creating a set of procurement items and a set of selected vendors, where the procurement items are the items requiring procurement by the organization and the selected vendors together are capable of supplying the set of procurement items, wherein, the step of creating a set of procurement items and a set of selected vendors further comprises developing a strategic overview of the organization's spend profile, supplier base, supplier industry dynamics and cost of ownership models; analyzing the procurement items, the spend profile, and spend dynamics to determine a segmentation of purchases of the procurement items, where the segmentation of purchases categorizes the procurement items into groups of similar items, each group being supplied by a single vendor; developing new contractual relationships with the selected vendors based on, at least, a vendor's capabilities and pricing; managing the selected vendors, this step further comprising the step of monitoring vendor performance; managing the procurement of procurement items from the selected vendors, where the procurement of procurement items is performed by a procurement team; and reviewing and reporting the performance of at least one of: the contracted vendors, the procurement team, or the organization's spend activity.