Office Furniture Systems Market Procurement Intelligence Report

Business practices within Office Furniture Systems market are heavily influenced by changing trends across the category as well as within the broader Office Furniture, Fixtures and Fittings market. A balanced approach to procurement of Office Furniture Systems has emerged, where buyers with multiple locations first outsource at individual locations and gradually move to standardize and consolidate the services across facilities.

Many companies are looking to engage Office Furniture Systems supplies in a long-term partnership to derive the highest ROI possible and creating an environment of trust and collaboration that allows for new optimization strategies.

As market presence of companies become global, there is a growing preference towards service providers who can provide services seamlessly across the globe and have excellent understanding of local regulations and culture.

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

It has become imperative for category managers to remain as agile as possible in terms of their procurement practices. However, it is not always easy to quickly spot and implement alternative practices in a category like Office Furniture Systems. To help quick decision making, this report advises on several procurement best practices that have worked well for category managers.

For example, Buyers must clearly define clauses pertaining to the ownership of sub-contracting services that are not a part of their preferred suppliers' portfolios. This will ensure consistency in the services of sub-contracted firms as well as protection of confidential data.

Benefits of an integrated program are more apparent over a period of 5-7 years, and the goal in such relationships is to achieve cost savings and improve performance in the long run. Buyers should opt for suppliers that have a track record of long-term engagements as this will increase the probability of these suppliers sustaining in a mutually beneficial relationship for a longer duration.

Investing in benchmarking studies that help category managers enhance their knowledge on pricing or billing rates of suppliers allows them to not only save costs, but also negotiate better with suppliers. For example, while negotiating for bundled services, they can save significantly on a single service by cross-verifying rates quoted by suppliers against industry benchmarks.

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