Railway-Track Maintenance Services Market Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Transportation Support Services and its sub-segments such as Railway-Track Maintenance Services are at an interesting intersection. Historically, suppliers have sub-contracted a fair portion of their work and earned attractive margins, thereby increasing the cost of buyers. Buyers are now scrutinizing the service models of suppliers in much more depth to identify potential for sub-contracting and negotiating hard to avoid cost escalation on account of sub-contracting by employing should-cost models.

Supplier evaluation and performance management is now being driven by select KPIs that serve as hard evidence to support cost reduction. Suppliers of Railway-Track Maintenance Services are developing targeted KPI matrix that help with actionable data on their performance and cost savings they achieved for the customer.

Technological advancements are enabling providers of Railway-Track Maintenance Services to leverage a diverse set of tools and identify resource and cost optimization opportunities in collaboration with the customers.

Trends like these and many others discussed in this report are necessitating a relook at the way Railway-Track Maintenance Services is procured and the procurement cost saving opportunities that exist.

Railway-Track Maintenance Services 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 Railway-Track Maintenance Services procurement strategy.

For example, There is a shift in focus toward minimizing emissions and energy usage to achieve sustainability goals. Buyers should monitor and evaluate the energy consumption of suppliers' operations before procurement. This also helps adherence with standards mandated by various national and international regulatory authorities.

Cost saving opportunities may reduce exponentially in relation to the time left for current contract to expire or required timeline to start the engagement. Therefore sufficient interval should exist between initation of new procurement and expected start date of the new contract for Railway-Track Maintenance Services.

Buyers should properly evaluate the effectiveness and sustainability of suppliers' safety process before onboarding them. Suppliers should be required to provide details data on workplace safety KPIs and accident statistics to complete their safety evaluation. This process can reduce accident related risks in the buyer's operations and reputational risks that arise from industrial accidents.

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