| There aren't that many management consultancies with their main focus of work on purchasing and procurement. Actually, major strategy consultancies such as Deloitte, KPMG, Arthur D. Little, Roland Berger, Oliver Wyman and many others also cover this area; however, their offer is primarily addressed to large clients or institutional accounts. |
For small and mid-sized businesses and for practical work, those specialists are more relevant which are specifically positioned in the area of purchasing and logistics. But it's not easy to draw the line between classic management consultancies and procurement service providers. Thus, for instance, HPI AG (Hoechst Procurement International) is an example of a purchasing and process services provider which is rather in the category of procurement service providers. Other companies such as a.m.consult and Kerkhoff Consulting are classic management consultancies; and Inverto is one example of a consulter which also brings in its own software to be used – the e-contor Sourcing Suite.
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Kerkhoff establishes joint venture with Insight Sourcing
In Germany, Kerkhoff Consulting sees itself as the leading management consultancy for supply chain management. In May 2010, a study by the weekly Wirtschaftswoche jointly with the Wissenschaftliche Gesellschaft für Management und Beratung (WGMB – Academic company for management and consulting) awarded first place to the company in the competition "Best of Consulting" in the area of "Supply Chain Strategy". One year before, the magazine Capital named the consultancy "Hidden Champion der Beratungsbranche" (Hidden champion of the consulting sector) in the purchasing area. The consultancy has its headquarters in Düsseldorf and is represented worldwide in ten countries. The Kerkhoff Competence Center of Supply Chain Management (KCC) at the Chair for Logistics Management at the University of St. Gallen brings together theory and practice in purchasing and supply chain management.
As of November 1, Kerkhoff Consulting expanded its international network by its collaboration with the Insight Sourcing Group from Atlanta. In 2002, the Insight Sourcing Group was founded by former top consultants of the consultancies A.T. Kearney and Deloitte. Founder and managing director Tom Beaty is one of the 100 leading purchasing experts in the U.S. according to the American trade magazine for purchasing and procurement "Supply and Demand Chain Executive". Kerkhoff Consulting and the Insight Sourcing Group already carried out two joint projects to reduce purchasing costs and the working capital for international groups.
"In the future, we'll be able to offer our European clients consulting services for their American organizations by the best purchasing consultants of America", says Kerkhoff. "No other German purchasing consultancy is currently in a position to do that." At the same time, Kerkhoff consultants will be available whenever projects of the Insight Sourcing Group affect Europe. "We examined the European market very thoroughly", says Tom Beaty, managing director of the Insight Sourcing Group. "No other company has a better market reputation than Kerkhoff Consulting. That's why Gerd Kerkhoff and I will collaborate exclusively starting immediately." And to show that their cooperation is not just a declaration of intent, Kerkhoff Consulting and the Insight Sourcing Group each established an American and a European joint company.
A topic especially in demand today and which Kerkhoff consultants deal with intensively is the increase in liquidity of companies by means of an integrated working capital management. The more money is tied up short-term in working capital, the less liquidity a company will have available for investments. According to Kerkhoff Consulting, optimum working capital management runs along the value-added chain: "In the areas of purchasing, production and sales. That's how tied-up capital can be significantly reduced and the company's liquidity increased thereby – on average by 20 to 30 percent." According to Kerkhoff Consulting, the first opportunities for a reduction of working capital present themselves in purchasing. Inventory management is an important leverage factor. At a portion of 34 percent on average, inventories are the largest item in current assets or net working capital. "One essential objective of inventory management is the reduction of procurement times. This enables the company to react flexibly to changing framework conditions – such as fluctuations in purchases and prices – without the need of building up high inventory reserves", says Kerkhoff Consulting.
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