Procurement professionals are faced with the challenge of securing business savings using a variety of strategies. These strategies include: establishing quality competitive bidding standards, analyzing product specifications, global sourcing and working with business departments to blend procurement considerations into all stages of product and services design and development. In addition, procurement specialists are also asked to improve efficiency and costs while expanding supplier diversity and spend for minority and women owned business enterprises (MWBEs). These two primary procurement goals may seem on the surface to be at odds with each other, but they can be balanced so that competition is enhanced in a way not possible if supplier diversity is excluded.

The truth is that in a global environment, supplier diversity plays an even more important role than it has in the past because non-traditional sources offer innovation and new strategies that increase competitiveness and force re-evaluation of standard approaches. This re-evaluation leads to a series of events that can ultimately lead to a company maximizing its ability to improve efficiency while controlling costs.