Purchasing Strategies and Structure aims to equip learners with an understanding of purchasing strategies and supply and demand issues.
Main Topics of Study:
Purchasing and Purchasing Strategy
- Purchasing and change
- The evolution of purchasing
- Purchasing, profitability and added value
- Purchasing status
- Organisational buyers
- Strategic Purchasing
- ~Levels
- ~Planning process
- ~Environmental scanning
- Purchasing Strategy
- ~Options
- ~Formulation
- ~Implementation
- ~Evaluation
- ~Control
- Purchasing performance
- Control and research
Purchasing Organisations and Procedures
- Organisational factors
- ~Organisational design and structure
- ~Approaches to organisation structures
- ~Centralised purchasing
- ~Purchasing and its functional interfaces
- ~Organisation of purchasing departments-internal organisation, group undertakings and horizontal organisations
- ~Logistics, materials and supply chain management
- Purchasing Procedures
- ~Traditional purchasing procedures and their inefficiencies
- ~Legal aspects of ordering procedures
- ~The ‘battle of the forms’
- ~Purchasing records
- ~Small orders
- ~Purchasing manuals
Information Technology in Purchasing
- Management Information Systems (MIS)
- Information Technology (IT)
- IT and competitive advantage
- Computer systems
- Computer operation
- A typical computerised purchasing application
- Flowcharts
- Essential features of a computerised supplies system
- Some computer applications relevant to purchasing
- Some advantages of computerised purchasing
- Telecommunications and networks
- Applications-electronic commerce, electronic data interchange, electronic funds transfer, email, smart cards, bar coding, catalogues
- Security and legal Issues
Contrasting Approaches to Supply
- Types of products-Industrial products, capital investment items, used equipment
- Evaluating capital investments
- Selecting suppliers of capital items
- Leasing
- Production materials-raw materials, futures dealings, commodity dealing, component parts and assemblies, bills of materials
- Consumables
- Construction supplies and bills of quantities
- Goods for resale in wholesaling and retailing
Example Candidate Response Booklet
Example Candidate Response (ECR) Booklets are a source of crucial information for Centres and Candidates as they use real candidate responses. We ask Senior Examiners to comment on five or more responses in terms of why the mark was awarded with commentary about how to improve the answer (if necessary).
