Stack Offs Category Procurement Intelligence Report

The market for Warehousing and Storage and its sub-segments such as Stack Offs are at an interesting intersection. Sustainability has emerged as a pivotal theme for procurement decisions related to supply chain. Companies are expecting their suppliers to internalize globally accepted sustainability practices and demonstrate a solid history of putting in practice similar principles. It is worth noting that practices of sustainability are not limited to only environmental impact but has taken a greater meaning of practices that can reduce the overall cost of operations in the long term.

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.

Rise in minimum labor wages across countries such as the US and China will result in increased employee expenses for Stack Offs suppliers who will be forced to pass on a part of this increase to their buyers.

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

Stack Offs 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 Stack Offs procurement strategy.

For example, Buyers must track suppliers' quality management systems to ensure that the products are stored in a hygienic environment and have almost zero probability of occurrence of damages. This is particularly critical for buyers in industries such as food and beverages and pharmaceutical.

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.

It is important that buyers assess the operating model of service providers to determine the best-fit case for their organizations. Buyers need to determine if services offered by the providers are comprehensive and involve adequate resource support and a well-defined customizable execution plan.

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