It is certainly not true that only women love shopping. Men too enjoy the occasional buying. Especially when there are huge discounts and bumper sales linked with it. There is one such day in the United States when everyone goes on a shopping spree and does some serious Christmas shopping. Yes, you guessed it right. I am talking about Black Friday.
Black Friday was coined in the 1960’s to mark the start of Christmas shopping season. Normally black indicates a negative connotation, but in this case “Black” refers to stores moving from the “red” to the “black,” back when accounting records were kept by hand and red ink indicated a loss, and black ink a profit. Traditionally, Brick and Mortar stores see a gush in their sales thus increasing profit and putting their books in black ink.
Retailers often offer door busters, loss leader and heavy discounts on products, attracting consumers in the hope that they will also purchase other higher margin goods. According to a study, 66% of consumers shop on Black Friday. Also around 135 million shoppers are expected to shop on Black Friday with sales revenue estimated at around $50 Billion dollars.
Any business which organizes Black Friday should have a good procurement department which sees to it that everything goes smoothly. Building a mutual beneficial relationship with suppliers and having a strong procurement strategy is very important, especially for small and medium sized businesses to face the competition.
Having a strong procurement strategy means having a well-defined process that is involved with the functional side of procurement such as managing suppliers, contract, payment of invoices etc. The business should have all solutions that deal with these processes like sourcing, contract management, supplier management, procure-to-pay etc. as procurement professionals require data. Without this data or information, which is needed to know how much the business is spending, on what goods and services and with which supplier, they cannot do their multi-million dollar saving which is in demand. Holistic suites of these solutions can help businesses save money and avoid risks. It also helps procurement department offer suppliers a more accurate picture of future demand in a timely fashion, cutting waste for both buyer and supplier.
If you have a business, always keep in mind to use procurement solutions that not only address the challenges, but also to help the procurement department to deliver optimum value to your business.
