Here are three ideas for dealing with monosourced situations:

The situations of single supplier — where there is only one referenced supplier available — are undoubtedly the most difficult situations that procurement professionals have to deal with.

Therefore, in the absence of Leverage of competition, sole suppliers are often not flexible in reviewing their prices, in accepting performance guarantees, and unwilling to be proactive in improving bottlenecks.

1. Get the support of your hierarchy to fight against situations where a supplier is monosourced

Management must understand that this situation generates a critical situation for purchases but also for supplies, and tends to create real organizational problems. Raise awareness of the evolution of prices of this sole supplier compared to other potential sources.

If management sees evidence that costs are rising much more rapidly at your single source, they will bear the corrective actions below.

2. Eliminate the cause

Many single-source situations occur when a product has been designed around the unique expertise of the supplier in question. This type of monopoly solution most often corresponds to an “organized” monopoly.

. A redesign that eliminates the need for a single source could be the remedy (Value engineering). Recourse to value analysis and/or functional analysis is essential.

However, these approaches are often the result of a business decision and are highly resource intensive. Therefore, the overall benefit must outweigh the costs.

3. Involve purchases early in projects

When the hierarchy is aware of the real danger of the monopoly situations suffered, it is enough to influence it to authorize an organizational policy requiring that the purchasing department be involved in the design of the product before the technical solution or the suppliers are selected, and thus anticipate the monosource situations suffered.

In conclusion, to avoid finding ourselves in this critical situation as a single-source supplier, two strategic tips:

Involve purchases early in project decisions in order to select only multi-supplier solutions and thus avoid monopoly situations that are “suffered”
Continuously develop its sourcing and monitoring

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