Finally! Both you and your supplier have signed a strategic agreement for the next five years. KPI’s and milestones are enshrined in the contract, and it’s a win-win for both of you. You have begun managing the contract and working with the supplier in their roll-out of materials and services to your organization.

You’re done, right?

Wrong.

With any strategic procurement agreement there is always room for improvement. While, overall, your strategic supplier may be saving you money overall, there may be parts and/or services that the supplier is still pricing high. It’s these handful of materials or services in strategic agreements that are ripe for negotiation.

For example, say you have a strategic agreement with a supplier for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) materials. You have over 10,000 line items in this master procurement agreement, and the supplier was the lowest total cost for 80%-85% of those materials – that’s why you awarded them the agreement. It’s that 20%-15% that can, and should, be negotiated down.

It’s up to you as the sourcing professional responsible for the agreement to regularly review chunks of the MRO materials list for pricing. Other suppliers may have offered some lower pricing on some of the materials in the bidding process, and the sourcing professional can use this information to negotiate with the awarded supplier.

The organization’s buyers are integral to this process, too, as they buy the materials everyday at the tactical level and may be able to spot materials in ones and twos that seem priced high. You can also send out RFQ’s for handfuls of materials at different intervals to see if there is better pricing. This RFQ process may be driven by a purchased dollar threshold set by the organization.

Key performance indicators are another way you can ensure the supplier is offering you the best pricing on these MRO materials. Having a KPI, or several KPIs, that focus on the supplier ensuring they are providing cost savings can help reduce pricing on materials in an already awarded agreement. Maybe a manufacturer has slashed pricing due to increased production, or there is a substitute part that is the same quality but another company produces it at a lower cost.

Once the MRO materials that are higher priced are identified, it’s up to you as the sourcing professional to bring in the supplier’s representatives and negotiate this. Generally speaking, the supplier will be open to reducing the pricing in order to retain your business and have hopes of winning the award again five years down the road.

Using these principles in other agreements, whether materials or services, will ensure you are getting the best pricing for your organization.