TNT Market Procurement Intelligence Report

A changing ecosystem within the Engineering Materials market also affects the procurement process, cost dynamics and supplier attractiveness for the buyers of TNT. Suppliers are continuously taking efforts to improve efficiencies and productivity and deploying processes and technologies. Some of these investments are likely to increase their costs in the shorter term, but learnings from other sectors keep the suppliers optimistic about a lean cost structure in the longer run.

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.

Procurement costs for TNT are highly impacted by an increase in the costs associated with the value chain of TNT, such as logistics, labor cost and energy. Additionally, outdated assets are also increasing the cost for suppliers.

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 TNT procurement insights and hand picks best practices that can work for category managers delving in this market.

For example, Competitive bidding as a cost optimization tool is extremely potent but should be carefully deployed only when there is no significant differentiation among TNT suppliers.

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 assess the level of adoption of the latest technologies by suppliers to assess cost-saving opportunities and quality that can be provided by the latter. For instance, the adoption of technologies such as cloud computing will enable suppliers to reduce their internal computing hardware requirements for operations such as CAD and CAM. This can, in turn, enable them to reduce their operating costs, thereby suppliers can offer products at lower rates to buyers.

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