Supplier relationships have evolved to become an opportunity for creating market-winning competitive advantages, or allowing competition to leverage those advantages to the detriment of your company.

Realization of this emerging reality has resulted in the increasing adoption of the principles and processes of strategic sourcing. Suppliers are a competitive weapon in the arsenals of world class companies with the realization that strategic sourcing builds supply chains that win against the best of the best.

Companies can no longer afford to assume that a supply of materials will be there when and where they need it, and in the quantity they need, and at the price they’ve come to expect. Forces on a global scale have made such comfortable assumptions a thing of the past. Compliance with increasingly complex environmental requirements, supply uncertainties resulting from political unrest, and accelerating global levels of competition for critical materials, are just a few of the material supply complexities that companies must face and overcome continually.

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