Here's how you can effectively convey your sourcing strategy to internal stakeholders.

Before you share your sourcing strategy, it's essential to understand who your stakeholders are and what information they need. Different departments will have varying priorities, so tailor your message to address their specific concerns and objectives. For example, the finance team will be interested in cost savings and return of investment, while marketing might focus on supplier reliability and quality. By aligning your strategy with each stakeholder's goals, you demonstrate how sourcing decisions support the broader business objectives, making it easier for them to buy into your plan.

Start by outlining the primary goals of your sourcing strategy, such as cost savings, quality enhancement, risk management, or supplier diversity. Present data-driven insights to support your strategy, highlighting key metrics, expected outcomes, and potential risks. Use visuals like charts and graphs to make the data more comprehensible. Demonstrate how your sourcing strategy aligns with and supports the broader business objectives. Show how it contributes to the company's growth, competitive advantage, and long-term success, ensuring stakeholders understand its strategic value.

Customize your communication based on each department’s priorities, The way I follow in my practical life: Finance Team: Emphasize cost savings and ROI. Example: “Our new supplier offers a 15% discount, which will save us $50,000 annually.” Marketing Team: Focus on supplier reliability and quality. Example: “This supplier has a 99% on-time delivery rate, ensuring we meet our product launch deadlines.” Operations Team: Discuss efficiency and process improvements. Example: “With this supplier, we reduce lead time by 20%, speeding up our production cycle.” By understanding your audience and addressing their specific concerns, you make your sourcing strategy more relevant and compelling, leading to greater support from all stakeholders.

Setting clear goals effectively conveys your sourcing strategy to internal stakeholders by providing a focused roadmap. Clearly define objectives, timelines, and expected outcomes. Use visual aids like charts and graphs to illustrate key points. Regularly update stakeholders on progress and involve them in decision-making to ensure alignment and collective buy-in for the strategy.

Include them in initial discussions and planning. Gather Input. Market Analysis: Share market trends and get input on potential suppliers. Example: “We’re looking at suppliers in this region. What’s your perspective on their reliability?” Supplier Selection: Discuss and agree on selection criteria. Example: “Let’s define the top three qualities our suppliers must have. What are your thoughts?” Risk Management: Involve them in identifying and planning for risks. Example: “What risks do you foresee with this supplier, and how can we mitigate them?” By engaging stakeholders early, you ensure their concerns and ideas are integrated into the strategy, leading to stronger support and better outcomes.

From my experience, sourcing is traditionally viewed by internal stakeholders as a "step" in the process of delivering a product, service or project, as measured by their respective strategies, scorecards and KPI's. Therefore, it is imperative to communicate as early as possible key elements of the sourcing process, including but not limited to, sourcing governance, committee approvals, approval workflows, timelines, budget approvals, inputs required into the sourcing strategy and documentation needed to launch the sourcing event(s), etc. If internal stakeholders are engaged early enough, they can adjust their project plans and expectations accordingly, thereby creating a more collaborative and effective working relationship.

From personal experience, a tried and tested method for fostering collaboration with internal stakeholders, is to get as close as possible to your (primary) internal customer. This may include, spending a minimum amount of time in your internal customers environment (e.g. 1 or 2 days a week), possibly requesting a temporary workstation or desk for the weekly visits, permission to attend scheduled strategy or delivery meetings, etc. By getting as close as possible to your internal customer, you invariably break down silos. More often than not, internal customers want stakeholders (incl. sourcing) to understand their needs and challenges and by listening, it opens the path to collaboration and creating win-win scenarios.

One of the biggest challenges in executing sourcing strategies and processes is the lack of understanding and visibility of the sourcing process. By using weekly check-in meetings and/or regular visits to the internal customers environment, critical and informative updates regarding sourcing projects and processes can be shared. This will facilitate the need for project plan updates, strategy re-alignments, or course corrections if required.