Welcome to the next in the series of Sourcing Specialist blog posts – this time, Alun Morris, Sourcing Consultant at Wax Digital offers advice on buying professional services and getting the skills you need at the right price.

The breadth of professional services required by an organisation can be a real sourcing challenge. Sourcing people and services needs to be handled differently to sourcing products so it is imperative to be clear about the type of service you need, and consider what you are prepared to pay.

Procurement needs to focus on the requirement, internal process, business objective, market structure and competition, supplier compatibility, best value and price. Achieving best price however, is not the core objective here, so determining the actual need for the service and how it can best be fulfilled, before embarking on the procurement project is essential.

The end users requirements must be taken into account, but a category management approach from the procurement team is also required to ensure that the right service is purchased at the right price. If there is a specialist need or overriding business case this should also factor, however preparation, planning and understanding – on both sides of the fence (procurement and the end-user) is a must.

Clarifying precisely the types of people required to deliver the services, in terms of qualifications and experience, ensures that tender responses remain focused on your needs be it strategic consultancy or practical project management. Even once you have defined these core sourcing criteria and have a watertight brief you should be ready for a variance in your suppliers’ approaches to tender responses. No two service organisations are the same and innovative pricing and service delivery will be on offer as the basis of good value, so it is critical to have a clear understanding of the core cost drivers and associated overheads as your benchmarks.

It’s also important when in-sourcing or out-sourcing to be able to measure value against realistic internal delivery costs. Before you start this process have you evaluated how much it would cost your organisation to do the same job in-house?

Sourcing professional services is a significantly different ballgame to products so prepare yourself for a greater variety of options and making choices based not only on best value but also on the best fit for your type of organisation.