Blood-Transfusion Supplies Market Procurement Intelligence Report

Business practices within Blood-Transfusion Supplies market are heavily influenced by changing trends across the category as well as within the broader Medical and Surgical Equipment and Supplies market. Providers are increasing their adoption of new tools and technologies to optimize efficiencies and reduce the time taken to launch products in the market. This is adding to their OPEX and will have an inflationary impact on the overall price paid by the buyers.

Many suppliers are expanding within the value chain to offer integrated solutions. With this new approach, suppliers can offer a wide portfolio of solutions and position themselves for large contracts that go beyond just Blood-Transfusion Supplies. Buyers also find the benefits of volume buying, consolidation of supplier base, efficient co-ordination in case of an event and less spending on category management.

Despite increasing costs on almost all fronts, suppliers are resisting a drastic price increase due to intense competition where market players are willing to increase their market share at the cost of profitability. Therefore, buyers can expect pricing status quo in most cases, or only negligible to marginal price increases in some cases.

As a result, category managers need to closely monitor the Blood-Transfusion Supplies procurement trends and identify changes required in their procurement environment for the category.

Blood-Transfusion Supplies procurement best practices are moving towards a level of sophistication which is typically seen in traditional procurement categories. Category managers now have an attractive opportunity to adapt the best practices seen within this category as well as those being leveraged in other non-related categories. This report summarizes the best practices picked from across multiple categories that could work well for category managers involved with Blood-Transfusion Supplies procurement strategy.

For example, Category buyers should invite bids from all potential service providers that have the ability to meet the overall requirements. Bids must be evaluated based on pre-defined parameters such as financial strength, reputation, offerings, geographical presence, and track record. Buyers can use standard scorecards to evaluate service providers and provide necessary feedback to rationalize the given scores. This helps in the effective documentation of decision-making processes.

Buyers should look to minimize the contract-related risks where unfavorable credit terms may severly penalize buyers for delayed payments or entitle the supplier to demand pre-payments or shorten the payment terms. Although these clauses are not very common in the category, suppliers may still insist on them, especially in situations where buyers' liquidity or financial health is in question.

It is important for category managers to track and measure the performance of suppliers against a set of defined KPIs that are agreed upon during the contract negotiation phase. The performance of suppliers can also be linked to a portion of their fee that can be paid upon rendering of services in a satisfactory manner.

Blood-Transfusion Supplies procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Blood-Transfusion Supplies procurement. Some examples include: