Intermediate Bulk Container Category Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Warehousing and Storage and its sub-segments such as Intermediate Bulk Container are at an interesting intersection. Suppliers are increasingly adopting a demand-driven planning of their assets and resources to reduce costs and optimize operational efficiency. Part of the cost savings are passed on to buyers, but this also creates supply chain risks for them that need to be managed jointly with the supplier.

Managing the logistics risks and building a resilient supply chain has taken the centerstage among corporate priorities. Companies are investing heavily to be able to detect disruptions in time and respond in a manner which does not put the core operations at risk. All suppliers within the ecosystem are expected to play their part and embrace the processes, tools and technologies that their customers have implemented to build a resilient supply chain.

Businesses are focused on maintaining a lean inventory of raw materials, parts, components and finished goods. While it is a novel concept to keep the inventory costs in check, it also highly challenging to implement in a global sourcing context and requires a clock work like optimization of logistics and warehousing processes. Companies are moving to a completely digital supply chain footprint to reduce errors and risks associated with such strategies.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Intermediate Bulk Container is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

Intermediate Bulk Container 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 Intermediate Bulk Container procurement strategy.

For example, Buyers prefer to engage with service providers that offer robust technological systems and leverage Internet-based systems to reduce cost and simplify visibility across the supply chain. Buyers should also assess the integration capabilities of software platforms offered by service providers to ensure that there are no additional costs incurred for software implementation.

Buyers need to assess the level of automation provided and time required to obtain process efficiency, apart from checking if suppliers have the correct documentation for as-is processes and to-be processes to avoid any conflicts in implementation.

Buyers should negotiate to get the best add-on services from their suppliers, such as real-time tracking, route optimization, big data analytics to plan and forecast future requirements and Six Sigma practices to ensure the procurement of quality services.

Intermediate Bulk Container procurement managers also need to proactively identify and mitigate potential risks that can arise in the supply chain or contracts for Intermediate Bulk Container procurement. Some examples include: