Tag Archives: PTI

Company

Past, Present and Future

Arvo Cost Management Energy audits consultancy tactical procurement

Recently the wonderful team at IGNITE in UCC, produced this fantastic infographic documenting the Arvo story from humble supply.ie beginnings to the current range of sourcing, consultancy and training offerings under the Arvo umbrella. Our focus for the past 10 years to “help companies to save time, money and hassle” has not changed but our solutions to address your evolving market needs, have matured with our growth.

In the beginning, our eSourcing platform (supply.ie), was used by over 5,000 Irish businesses to source 3 quotes quickly for goods and services. The success of this simple tendering solution led to an appointment in 2012 to the European Commission e-Tendering Expert Group, which has advised EU Government’s with regards eProcurement. At home, saving SME’s money on Print & Stationery soon led to a demand to reduce costs in other areas, such as Utilities, whereby our Smart Energy Services helped businesses to correct MICs/Tariffs, Group Buy to leverage scale and deliver instant cost savings, while proactive businesses then invest the savings in Energy Efficient Equipment.

Presently, the Arvo business is delivering value for a range of Procurement Stakeholders with;

1. Our Brexit Sourcing Services helping businesses prepare for the imminent supply chain threats posed by Britain’s exit from the EU, especially if a “no deal” or hard-Brexit transpires

2. Our Tendering Services help both buyers and suppliers, by supporting buyers through every stage of the Strategic Sourcing event, while assisting suppliers prepare, identify, qualify and respond professionally to appropriate bid opportunities

3. While our Strategic Procurement Services and Tactical Procurement Supports help both public and private-sector clients, with their strategic focus to deliver long-term value and impact, while our Tactical Procurement expertise supports the day-to- day operational aspects of sourcing and procurement.

While predicting what the future holds is an almost impossible task, but as outlined in this Business & Finance CEO Interview, Arvo’s focus is to grow the Procurement Transformation Institute (PTI), which is a competency centre that provides a gateway to procurement education, thought leadership and training while empowering the buying community. While we will continue to research the merits of creating a decentralised group trading platform with distributed ledger technologies, to enable seamless trading experience for unknown buyers and sellers. Stay tuned for this next (r)evolution…

The Procurement Transformation Institute

On January 31st we launched the Procurement Transformation Institute in partnership with IDDEA. The PTI is a not-for-profit organisation founded by a team of expert procurement practitioners, academics, advisors and thought leaders.

Partnering with 9 procurement competency centres in Europe, PTI is positioning procurement as a preferred career for today’s and tomorrow’s professionals for the benefit of competitiveness, job creation and innovation for organisations of all sizes in Ireland.

The PTI is based on the island of Ireland and works in collaboration with SMEs, multinationals, universities, professional associations and institutes. Our vision and mission are international; we research and translate procurement standards into deliverable value for organisations and individuals.

 

The PTI is built around 5 pillars:

PTI ACADEMY: whose mission is to develop a CPD Procurement Membership Body offering all procurement resources relevant mind set, skillset and toolset training that will steer and guide them on the progression on their career path.

PTI COMMUNITY: whose mission to create an environment of peer to peer communication and knowledge exchange, access up to date industry and European wide accepted standards, tools, insight, initiatives and trends. The PTI Community forum was launched on April 25th, 2018. See below for more information.

PTI EUROPE: As part of the Procure2Innovate H2020 Initiative, the PTI is excited to be part of the European Initiative to promote and disseminate Innovation Procurement Best Practices. The aim is to improve support for public procurers in implementing innovation procurement by establishing and expanding competence centres for innovation procurement in 10 EU member States. Indeed, to date, competence centres have largely worked autonomously and with little cross-border cooperation.

PTI EDUCATION: whose mission is to provide and promote European-wide accredited procurement certification in partnership with UCC, to pipeline and upskill procurement resource to benefit the growth of businesses.

PTI RESEARCH: whose mission is to deliver valuable and on-going research about the impact

of the changing environment on procurement. We want to ensure that the procurement profession stays relevant for the future. Through continuous optimisation and transformation, ongoing innovation is driven by industry-led research and thought leadership.

 

To keep up to date with the PTI and to gain greater insight into the world of public procurement, become a member of our inaugural Community forum by signing up here.

Brexit and your Supply Chain

As you know by now, European President Jean-Claude Juncker had a meeting with British Prime Minister Theresa May last Friday morning to agree a historic deal defining the terms of Britain’s divorce from the EU. If all that was agreed on December 8th comes to pass, the UK has essentially committed to a soft Brexit.

Ireland has done well in Phase 1 of the Brexit negotiations, including preserving the Common Trade Area, protecting the Good Friday Agreement and, crucially, obtaining a guarantee that there will be no hard border. It is now for the European Council to decide today if sufficient progress has been made to allow the negotiations to proceed to Phase 2, which is a significant step forward in the process leading towards UK withdrawal from the EU in March 2019. It is expected that a transition period would last two years ensuring Britain will remain part of the customs union and single market (including being subject to EU law) until 2021.

Thereafter, the risks and unknowns for your business need to be carefully considered. Most proactive businesses have started to document Brexit assumptions within their Brexit action plans, supporting their planning and strategy work. Whether importing directly or indirectly from the UK, the impacts to your operating model, supplier base, cost base and working capital requirements needs to de analysed, to understand where the areas of greatest risk are (so as to develop suitable mitigating actions to reduce the impact of Brexit on your business).

 

Specifically focusing on your supply-base and imports, can you answer the following 5 questions to identify risks and resilience steps for your business?

 

  1. What suppliers will impact the business most if they cannot supply you tomorrow?

 

  1. Do you know what % of your goods and services are coming directly or indirectly from the UK?

 

  1. Have you researched alternative non-UK suppliers?

 

  1. Are there contracts, licenses or regulations restricting your global sourcing strategies?

 

  1. Are you aware of the potential additional costs to import from Europe in terms of hubbing, logistics partners, Minimum Order Quantities plus the impact on cash flow?

 

As Arvo have been participating in Enterprise Ireland’s Brexit Roadshows recently, let us know today how we can help build resilience into your supply chain for Brexit (& other Political, Economic & Technological events that may cause risks for your business in future).

What is RFx?

As a Procurement Service listed on our marketing materials and website, the most common query we receive from clients reviewing our services is, what is RFx? To which we reply, “RFx does not stand for anything specifically; as the RF stands for “Request For” and the x is just a placeholder for I, P, B, T and / or Q i.e;

  • Request for Information (RFI),
  • Request for Proposal (RFP),
  • Request for Bid (RFB) (or sometimes Request for Price (RFP)),
  • Request for Tender (RFT), and /or
  • Request for Quote (RFQ).

 

We clarify that the RFI / RFP / RFQ are the most common Tendering processes used in the strategic sourcing and procurement cycles, while noting that the RFx process is difficult to define as it can range from a simple one-time RFQ to a complex multi-stage RFI / RFP / RFQ process, depending on the needs of the client. Choosing the most appropriate RFx process, is an important task which depends on the objectives of the sourcing event, the completeness of the product/service requirements, the number of suppliers involved, the level of competition between such suppliers, the inherent risk in the sourcing effort, and projected cost savings or cost avoidance opportunities.

 

typical Arvo sourcing event will consist of the 3 processes, where;

  1. The RFI is used to collect all stakeholder requirements, determine market interest before pre-qualifying interested and appropriate suppliers,
  2. The RFP is used to gather supplier offers in relation to their products, services, expertise and solutions, before
  3. The RFQ is used for suppliers to finalise their commercials proposals and quotations, leading to a final award decision (while even considering the use of Reverse Auctions at this stage)

 

Undoubtedly numerous benefits exist to regularly and correctly Tender (RFx) such spends but the 2 most important benefits of all sourcing events are to recognise that;

  1. Requests for either information or proposals can provide valuable insight into the current market situation, and
  2. Cost savings or cost avoidance opportunities exist throughout the process.

 

Finally, numerous platforms exist to expedite the Tender (or eTender) process so as to provide assistance with communications, pre-prepared templates, workflow management, access control and analytic tools. When you require assistance with your next Sourcing Challenge, be it a simple one-time RFQ to a complex multi-stage RFI / RFP / RFQ process, contact us to discuss further.