Global Sourcing- A Brief Account of It
Pankaj Tuteja
Head of Operations at Dragon Sourcing | Leading Voice in Sourcing, Procurement & Supply Chain | Sharing Insights & Reports to Drive Operational Excellence
The face of the business world has changed a lot nowadays. Technological advancement has taken it to another height while the new and progressive business plans and strategies give ways to achieve your goal faster. New terms are invented and innovation and creativity have become the first and last criteria to be successful in any business. Unless you give something unique to your customers and building a strong customer base, you can’t take quick steps towards your success.
Global sourcing service is the basic need for any business as it is the practice of sourcing from a global market of goods and services. while talking about global sourcing, that not only includes products, but also talk about sourcing efficiencies, like low cost yet skilled labor, economic factors, like low trade tariffs and tax breaks and low-cost raw materials. To know more about global sourcing, you should go through the following account.
What Is Global Sourcing?
Global sourcing is basically a procurement strategy. That means, it is followed to establish the most cost-effective location for manufacturing a product. The location can be in the foreign country. For example, if you are an owner of a chocolate company and find a foreign location to be the best ground to manufacture your product, you will go for that instead of any domestic factory. Today, while the business scenario is changing rapidly, the business organizations are realizing the importance of global sourcing and its benefits. Let’s dig deeper to know more about it.
Importance of Global Sourcing
The basic fact of a business is only the barter system. One can only make a product while he gets the raw material from someone else at the exchange of something. In the ancient era, businesses were run based on exchanges of goods. During the colonial era, the Europeans used the Asian market as the ground of serving raw materials and also the market of selling their manufactured goods. Nowadays, the situation has changed a lot. If the raw materials or efficiencies are not available in a country, it may look for it to another. For example, sourcing Asia can be profitable to get skilled labor at low cost. How is global sourcing playing important role in today’s business world?
1.Customers Are Getting More Concerned
The key factor of a successful business is to build up strong customer base along with entertaining their target consumers. Technological advancement has led every trade to some great extent and making customers know the real value of products. For example, people are well aware of the quality and taste of Swiss chocolates. The same chocolate, made in another country with the label of Swiss chocolate won’t get the customer base that the real one has.
2.Encourages Foreign Relations
Global sourcing plays important role in increasing foreign relation. As the countries have to depend on each other for several purposes, global sourcing can build strong trade relationships with countries. To establish the motto ‘one world, one trade’, global sourcing play vital role.
In these ways, global sourcing is important for making a trade successful. Meeting the customers’ desire is the most important thing and that’s why every business house should build strategies. Global sourcing definitely has lots of significance in that case.
Benefits of Global Sourcing
Let’s make something clear at first. Global sourcing is nothing magical that can increase your profit overnight. Still today, there are lots of companies which are making procurement decisions, based on the unit cost. But, the ‘one world’ theory, technological advancement, skilled and professional workers and capitals has made the entire world competing in the field to grab the opportunity to sell their products.
Therefore, global sourcing has become advantageous for all types of companies. Here are the essential benefits that global sourcing brings to you-
- Reduction in the overall cost, especially in the labor cost. Companies have found out the key to success through global sourcing, and that’s why outsourcing has increased a lot. They are moving their operations overseas to get skilled labor at much lower cost.
- Global sourcing increases scalability. Whenever a company is upgrading an existing product or building something new, global sourcing is the way to get the best ideas and professionalism from the experienced team around the world. There is no extra cost of running a team as it can be dispersed, once the project is completed.
- It is global sourcing that brings an incessant supply of raw materials. Maybe, there is a scarcity of particular material in the manufacturing country. Importing it from a foreign land is only possible if there is global sourcing.
These are certain advantages of global sourcing that can give a hike to a business. Here you get a certain idea about this new age sourcing. Thus, the world economy will be in the stable condition and individual business houses can make their own profit.
LinkedIn Learning Instructor @ DMSCA | Masters, Manufacturing Improvement
7 年You should attend DMSCA2018. Let's connect.
Director, Growth Programming| Minority Business Development Agency
7 年Interesting thought about Global sourcing. I think we also need to put ourselves in a position to justify our decisions regarding Global sourcing; Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) must be a part of what we consider as it relates to sourcing and procurement strategies. Total Cost of Ownership is especially important when we take on the task of constructing a global strategy because it takes in account the financial estimate intended to help buyers and owners determine the direct and indirect costs of a product or system. It is a management accounting concept that can be used in full cost accounting or even ecological economics where it includes social costs. We are taking on justifying not only the low cost of labor, but also what is required to get it to the plant floor or wherever the final destination is for the product or service. I think about the scenario of which country is the least cost country between China and Mexico? A global strategy must justify not only what I'm buying from a region of the world, but also why am I considering it the least cost country as it relates to TCO and other strategic reasons dictated by the firm. We certainly have the fundamentals to satisfy; cost, quality and delivery. Good talk.