Situation: Small package and express freight costs were increasing for many client companies at a rate faster than expected and budgeted. To reduce costs, companies were utilizing less reliable carriers and cutting service levels.

Solution: DSSI recognized the issue across clients and deployed the necessary resources to source small package and express freight. Spend across 14 companies was aggregated with commitment levels defined and agreed to by each company. Standard service levels were defined based on the best in-group and incorporated into the bid process.

Result: A single small package and express freight contract was implemented across 14 companies with service levels exceeding most current contracts. Savings realized ranged from 16% to 24% across the participating companies on a total spend of over $35mm.

Situation: To improve its company's financial performance, a client’s senior management placed a goal of 10% bottom-line, hard cost savings on its chemicals spend of $25MM.

Solution: A cross-functional team including DSSI, client purchasing, users, and influential chemists was formed. Baselines were gathered from all plants, including detailed usage and specification data. Bids were sent to selected suppliers, including criteria for hard cost savings, product specification, and service level requirements. The team evaluated the responses according to a pre-determined weighting and with additional negotiations a selection was made. The contract was implemented immediately by utilizing the incumbent's equipment while the equipment transition was completed in 30 days.

Result: Savings were realized in excess of 15% without sacrificing quality or service levels.

Situation: A client noticed it had an issue with the escalating cost in its hand tools commodity. Left unchecked, plant maintenance personnel were buying expensive, name brand hand tools, costing the company a premium while making them very attractive for "walking off the job".

Solution: DSSI's hand tools commodity experts were brought in to lead a team comprised of DSSI, client purchasing and end users. This group came together to define requirements, review purchasing history and establish a sourcing strategy. The ultimate goal was to standardize on manufacturers so that volume could be aggregated across locations to achieve optimal pricing.

Result: Three manufacturers were selected as corporate standards, offering savings of 15% across the board on the client's $1MM hand tools spend.

Situation: A Fortune 100 company with multiple procurement systems spread across 25+ plant locations initiated a program to get its hands around its indirect spend. The challenge was that each plant purchased items using locally assigned codes with item descriptions "maintained" by the local purchasing agent. Even when plants were buying the same item, it was not apparent due to the different local codes and descriptions. What one agent described as a "glove" another agent called "personal protection equipment - hand", multiple these variations by the different sizes, manufacturers and supplier variables and it is easy to see how this client had limited insight into its indirect spend.

Solution: DSSI received an electronic output of these desperate systems and began to cleanse and standardize the information. First, DSSI matched as much of the data as possible using its own standardized catalog, which included manufacturer and manufacturer part numbers. What it could not identify on paper, DSSI and its suppliers conducted onsite visits to identify the remaining items and create standard item records.

Result: DSSI identified, commonized and standardized over 200,000 items and provided cleansed data back to the client. The client now had the foundation to enable further business analysis and cost saving initiatives.