Outsourced Solar Procurement

Outsourcing purchasing, sourcing, or all procurement needs is becoming more and more popular as businesses look to cut costs and streamline processes. For solar businesses, third-party solar procurement services offer many of the same benefits seen in other industries:

• Cost savings through volume purchasing. This is especially powerful for small or mid-sized solar businesses that don’t have the scale to negotiate better rates for equipment on their own.
• Cost savings through demand management. A solar procurement expert can help your organization manage, or better manage, internal demand for equipment. Proper demand planning decreases turnaround time, optimizes spend, and can improve purchase agreements.
• Optimized operations. Processes that have been streamlined for cost efficiency, as well as any location advantages leveraged by the third-party provider, are yours when you combine forces.
• Access to solar industry expertise. A big benefit of procurement in solar is the large scale of third-party providers. This means they’ll have high levels of expertise across multiple categories of service. Working with procurement solar specialists gives your organization access to their industry knowledge and systems – and may benefit your company in areas beyond those you outsource.
• Quickly scale up or down as your business needs change. Using a third-party’s infrastructure allows you to adjust your business model without changing your own infrastructure.
• Free up your own assets to focus on other high-value areas. With a suitable procurement solar specialist handling your sourcing and/or purchasing needs, your team can spend their time on other things.
• Single point of contact for all sourcing and purchasing communications.

According to Oliver Wyman, nine out of 10 companies who have outsourced procurement are happy with the results. That doesn’t mean solar electrical procurement companies will automatically save you time or money, though. To determine whether outsourcing could benefit your business, consider the following:

• Does the third-party procurement provider have expertise in your industry? The best outcomes from outsourcing happen when the provider has a deep understanding of both your business needs and the industry market as a whole.
• Do you need it done now? Outsourcing procurement can give a new or rapidly growing business a big advantage since there will be no lag time in service deployment while internal teams are ramping up.
• Is this something you already manage in-house? If your internal processes give you a market advantage, it may not be worth outsourcing. However, if you don’t have the resources to manage procurement internally, or if you want to focus your strategic resources on other areas, the right third-party provider will be an asset.
• Do you have strong competitive pricing agreements in place? Small to midsize businesses often benefit most from the aggregate pricing third-party procurement services can offer.