Steve Mortensen is the president of Strategic Business Solutions and serves as a management consultant and buyer's agent for the ceramic manufacturing industry. He has nearly 20 years of experience in the industry, helping companies solve a variety of business problems related to increasing revenue and decreasing expenses. He can be reached at (626) 419-3907, fax (626) 852-7735, e-mail steve@professionalcatalyst.com or online at http://www.professionalcatalyst.com.
In this sixth and final column in the "Purchasing Power" series, learn how to maximize your negotiation leverage, address proposal discrepancies with vendors, ensure all your business needs will be met, and establish reasonable performance measures that will help keep the project on track.
In this fifth column in the "Purchasing Power" series, learn how to create an effective comparative matrix of supplier proposals, techniques for addressing specification variances, methods for integrating key business information into the evaluation process, and key qualification issues that should be confirmed at this stage.
In this fourth column in the "Purchasing Power" series, learn how to find suppliers having the specific business strengths and technical expertise you need, which questions should be asked and answered early in supplier discussions, and the appropriate methods to use for supplier qualification.
In this third column in the "Purchasing Power" series, learn which information is most important to include in your project specifications, how to differentiate between critical and desirable capabilities, and how to establish a reasonable and meaningful way to measure specification compliance.
In this second column in the "Purchasing Power" series, learn how to assess and document your technical and business needs, establish parameters that will govern project participants, and create metrics that will be used to manage the project and measure its success.