February 20, 2011 at 6:34 AM

Office products buyers looking for more cost reductions may not be taking full advantage of their companies’ relationships with suppliers. 

“Procurement operations have a lot on their plates right now, and they are not maximizing the effectiveness of their programs with their office products supplier,” says Ara Arslanian, director of category development at Corporate United, a group purchasing organization based in Cleveland. 

“We are not seeing as much adoption and traction as we’d like with office products programs,” he says. “Procurement is not treating their supplier as a full-service house. They’re only now starting to aggregate all the capabilities of their supplier.”

Doing more with less continues to be the watch word for procurement operations even as the economy recovers, Arslanian says. Managing cost continues to be a top priority and management is pushing procurement to be more creative. 

Office products suppliers too have their challenges, he says. Competition is keen so suppliers have expanded their offerings to include other related products and services such as furniture, cleaning and break room supplies and managed print programs, to name a few.  

“Combined these trends are forcing procurement operations to take another look at how best to optimize or maximize the relationship more than just the traditional way they’ve done it in the past,” says Arslanian. 

“The morale of the story is not just how do we save x% on pens and pencils, but how do we integrate and partner with our office solutions supplier to become more holistic in the way we manage the program,” he says.

To be successful at this, procurement professionals with responsibility for the office products buy are taking more of a leadership role at their companies. For instance, they’re aligning with other functions such as facilities management to get them to recognize the value of expanding a program to include cleaning and breakroom supplies. 

“Procurement is realizing that they have to leverage supplier relationships more so than in the past,” Arslanian says. “If they are doing it in a vacuum with one traditional buyer, then they are really missing the opportunity.” 

Another way procurement is taking a leadership role to better manage costs is by working to increase awareness of contracts with office products suppliers at the end user level. “It’s one thing to have a good contract,” he says of these efforts to encourage compliance. “It’s another to have one that’s being used. These days, procurement can’t afford to have a good contract sitting idle.” 

In the same vein of encouraging compliance to better manage cost, procurement is working to ensure that suppliers are billing and their companies are paying contract prices that were agreed upon by both parties during negotiations.  

“So, procurement’s managing a program with an office products supplier is far more than just we have the x% we needed to get in year one,” Arslanian says. “It’s really the life cycle management of not only the contract and terms but the supplier as well.” 

Susan Avery

Susan has 25 years experience covering the purchasing function for Purchasing magazine and Purchasing.com. In that role, she led editorial coverage of supply management at manufacturing and services companies and managed coverage of indirect sourcing, developing expertise in industrial MRO, corporate travel, services and IT markets, as well as e-procurement, procurement cards and software. She created content for Purchasing.com, a Media Business magazine Top 10 Great Website, and blogged on compensation and professional development for PurchasingBizConnect, the first social networking website for purchasing professionals.

Susan received the National Business Travel Association Business Travel Journalism Award in 2008 and has a B.A. in Business and Economics from Saint Anselm College.

As chief editor for My Purchasing Center, Susan is responsible for creating content--writing news and feature stories and blogging--on issues important to purchasing professionals as well as managing and editing content contributed to the site.