Mills Market Procurement Intelligence Report

Business practices within Mills market are heavily influenced by changing trends across the category as well as within the broader Engineering Products and Equipment market. Procurement costs for Mills are highly impacted by an increase in the costs associated with the value chain of Mills, such as logistics, labor cost and energy. Additionally, outdated assets are also increasing the cost for suppliers.

Regulatory guidance on data protection and increasing concern over cybersecurity have increased the costs for suppliers as they incur additional spend on compliance and security. These additional costs have a potential to drive marginal increase in prices across the key geographies.

Customers are expecting service and experience levels which are at par with what ecommerce and consumer sectors of today offer. Moreover, competition keeps intensifying and demand and supply dynamics keep shifting.

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

Sometimes, procurement functions are unable to timely alter their practices while responding to market conditions. Industry experts acknowledge that periodically reviewing procurement best practices and adopting learnings from across procurement categories can help procurement teams respond to market needs in a more agile way. This report combines our experience of other categories with Mills procurement insights and hand picks best practices that can work for category managers delving in this market.

For example, Buyers should engage with suppliers that repurchase used products at fair market value. This assists buyers to dispose of used products in a convenient manner. Also, during such repurchases, suppliers provide credits to buyers for future purchases. This reduces overall procurement costs for buyers.

Buyers should engage with suppliers that have adopted a global delivery model as it reduces buyers' risk. In this model, any disaster/emergency at any operating facility of supplier will result in the work being transferred to a different facility, thereby ensuring continuity of the project and reduced risk for buyers. This model also provides buyers access to skilled labor from across the globe, thereby improving the quality of engineering products provided by the supplier.

Buyers should engage with suppliers that have recycling capability. Recycling capability of the suppliers will lower their production costs which will be passed on to buyers. Additionally, the recycling capability will contribute in furthering the sustainability goals of the buyers' organization.

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