Currants Market Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Environmental Goods and its sub-segments such as Currants are at an interesting intersection. The global industry has seen a gradual increase in labor cost due to several factors, such as shortage of a trained workforce, increase in minimum wages, regulations around employee benefits and declining appeal for what have been traditionally called unskilled jobs. As the employee expenses increase, suppliers are compelled to pass some of this increase to their buyers by charging higher prices.

Many suppliers are trying to enhance the efficiencies and productivity within their operations through investment in new technologies and an overhaul of processes. Some of these initiatives are likely to influence their cost structure adversely till the time they recover their investments. However, a successful implementation of these programs can benefit them with a better cost proposition in the longer run.

Buyers are moving towards longer contract durations with suppliers of Currants to benefit from value-based discounts, integrated products and services, lower renewal cost and lesser expenses on contracting activities.

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

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 Currants. To help quick decision making, this report advises on several procurement best practices that have worked well for category managers.

For example, Buyers need to evaluate the in-depth expertise of suppliers in the Currants industry. This can be assessed by considering factors such as the years of experience, number of resources that have multi-year experience of working in the same industry and at least 3 to 5 credentials for the supplier.

Buyers need to employ robust should-cost models and total cost of ownership models to aid Currants supplier selection and pricing negotiations.

Buyers should proactively manage relations with Currants suppliers and have pre-determined intervention criteria for onboarding or replacing a supplier, changing specifications or terms and conditions.

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