Often when I teach purchasing best practices the attendees say: "We agree the greatest value we can add is through requirements planning and contracting but we don’t have the time. We spend most of our time just keeping up with the paper work!" One of the largest time consumers is handling local/emergency orders. These are "value detractors" and should be minimized.

Local/emergency orders exist because of a supply chain failure. Either demand was not anticipated, supply was interrupted, and product quality was poor. Regardless of the reason, we waste money to respond. Rarely are we able to tap into well negotiated contract pricing and worse yet users are often delayed reducing productivity.

The solutions tie into other best practices. First is forecasting demand. As described in the requirements planning section, forecasts make our operations more efficient and have the added benefit of helping suppliers reduce their costs. Supply and quality problems are best attacked through a supplier evaluation process. See the Tools Section of the site for details. Finally, a procurement card can be an effective way of reducing administrative effort when emergencies do arise.