Strategic purocurement in industrial medium-sized companies: what buyers should know
published on
10.4.2025
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Medium-sized procurement and its importance for the manufacturing industry are still underestimated. Low sales power and lack of personnel in procurement departments of small and medium-sized companies often lead to the assumption that one has to adapt to one's suppliers and the global raw material prices.
However, especially in the procurement of industrial SMEs, the procurement department has an unexpectedly high leverage, which is too often disregarded. After all, direct material expenses and purchased services account for around 50% of company costs on average, which is therefore one of the main cost drivers.
Rising inflation, global commodity shortages and other trouble spots are creating a whole new set of challenges for industrial SMEs, and they're not exactly making life any easier for buyers. So why deal with strategic issues in the current situation, when the working day seems to have no end as it is?
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Supplier relationship and development moves into focus
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Managing categories as strategic business units
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Reporting as a basis for planning and decision-making
Especially in times of supply bottlenecks, raw material shortages and tense global markets, many medium-sized companies can no longer afford to do without a strategic orientation of their procurement activities. Due to limited resources, personnel problems and time constraints, SMEs already face enough challenges to make it difficult to deal with additional issues.
In order to integrate a strategic component into a procurement department, however, it is usually not necessary to have a separate department: It is often sufficient to train the existing employees who perform important operational work in strategic topics. In addition to the Chamber of Industry and Commerce, the BME and a number of private providers also offer training courses and seminars on strategic thinking, negotiation skills or the use of selected tools in the company's own procurement department.
On a digital level in particular, there is now a whole range of tools that can relieve strategic procurement of important work. Some of them are even specially tailored to the needs of strategic procurement in medium-sized companies and can be integrated into the existing systems without much implementation time.
Simplify strategic procurement with Tacto
Compared to operational procurement, strategic procurement actively engages in discussions with suppliers, tries to optimize services and find potential savings in the supply chain. The tasks are diverse in nature and can vary depending on the industry. The core tasks can be divided into three sub-areas.
Focus of the strategic buyer's work is the active engagement with the company's suppliers and subcontractors. However, this work is not limited to looking at quantitative supply data and price developments, but rather serves to cultivate good relationships over the long term. The supplier is taken by the hand by the strategic buyer and informed about the long-term goals and plans of the company regarding growth and development.
On the one hand, of course, the focus is on optimization and consultation with regard to short-term stability, costs and quality. On the other hand, however, it is primarily a matter of associating the company name with a face to which a relationship can be built up. Long-term, good contacts often pay off double or triple, especially in times of crisis.
The idea behind category management is to manage categories as strategic business units. Several articles can be grouped into logical sub-areas that are similar on the basis of a common characteristic (e.g. intended use or origin).
For the strategic buyer, active category management offers the opportunity for the company and supplier to work together efficiently to optimize categories with combined expertise, while not getting lost at the article level.
This creates a procurement structure that is better aligned with the wishes and needs of the company. Moreover, in practice, this increases value creation and profit.
Procurement represents the corporate area with the most interdepartmental as well as external interfaces. A strategic buyer has to coordinate with several departments at the same time and maintain an overview.
In strategic procurement, methods of data collection, spend analysis and market research are combined to obtain an overview of all relevant markets. Insights gained are incorporated into the decision-making process. This makes it necessary for the information gathered to be communicated to all decision-makers in order to find the best possible solution for both the strategic long-term oriented management and the relevant manufacturing and planning departments. The procurement strategy must be aligned with the company's overall strategy so that it can then be implemented quickly and efficiently in operational procurement.
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