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PRIVATE EQUITY VALUE CREATION SERIES: SPOTLIGHT ON PROCUREMENT

May 24, 2023  |  3 Minute Read


Steve Schepps

Goldman Sachs Asset Management Operating Advisor – Operational Excellence

Steve Schepps


 

Introduction

Today’s dynamic markets require companies to demonstrate agility and acceleration. Agility requires early detection of disruption and the ability to rapidly reorient to capitalize on change. Acceleration emerges from the use of technology, data, and networks to deliver exponential results. Both require creativity and courage to look beyond convention and turn best practice into next practice.

 

We have assembled a network of experts in our Value Accelerator who aim to proactively identify areas of disruption on the horizon, draw on their collective functional and industry expertise to develop actionable tools and insights, and work closely with our portfolio companies to enhance agility and acceleration in this era of rapid change.

 

 

Procurement

Efficient and well-informed procurement practices are fundamental to company top and bottom lines. Supply chain constraints and inflation have upended procurement practices at many companies over the past several years, driving a need for an evolving, multi-lever strategic approach that goes beyond simple cost reduction. For portfolio companies navigating the commodity super-cycle, we believe the ability to engage with our procurement experts within the Value Accelerator as well as the broader GS network has been a critical lever. Our team has worked with several companies to understand key data, evolve approaches and relationships, and ultimately accelerate best practices.

 

 

CASE STUDY

Inflation Mitigation Project with a Global Industrial

We worked with a global industrial company to anticipate and mitigate the impact of inflation on the company’s bottom line.

 

 

Our approach:

  • Focused on identifying margin exposure: Built a database that provided insights into the inflation risks in the company’s bills of materials, revealing $25M+ in raw material cost exposure.
 
  • Targeted pricing pass-through: Worked with commercial teams to determine pricing pass-through for inflation on a customer by customer and product by product basis and established an effective ‘control tower’ and tracking process to ensure execution of 100+ customer initiatives.

CASE STUDY

Strategic Sourcing with a Producer of Specialty Packaging

We worked with a US-based producer of specialty packaging to drive insights into their costs and arm their procurement team for negotiations with suppliers.

 

 

Our approach:

  • Established index-based pricing formulas to more accurately measure key input costs. This ensured that suppliers could only pass on commodity costs in proportion to their impact on the cost of the product they sell to the portfolio company.
 
  • Informed negotiations with suppliers: Helped the procurement team focus their negotiations and supplier selection on the value-add portion of the spend – that which the supplier can control.

Value Extension Across Portfolio Companies

To extend these capabilities to other portfolio companies impacted by the commodity inflation super-cycle, we designed monthly insights into each portfolio company’s commodity exposure. It was customized for each participating company and tracked the most relevant commodity indices that impact their financials. It included commodities as varied as chicken wings, potatoes, German power, European cold rolled steel, China brass rod, and everything in between, a total of 138 commodities encompassing metals, energy, chemicals, freight, services, labor, and agriculture.

 

Participating companies received a customized report highlighting significant movements in commodity rates relevant to their business, with the goal of enabling management teams to engage with suppliers to ensure they are receiving the pass-through benefits of any commodity price decreases, or develop action plans to address potential cost increases.

 

 

Summary

The robust design of our Value Accelerator network offers us access to deep functional expertise and broad industry knowledge with senior executives and advisors around the world. In the procurement realm, our Operating Advisors have been instrumental in early detection of the severity of inflation and supply shocks and in supporting rapid model pivots, resulting in accelerated mobilization to keep our portfolio companies one step ahead of the changing marketplace.

 

 

 

 

Related Insights

The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and not necessarily of Goldman Sachs. The investments discussed in this paper do not represent any Goldman Sachs product.

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Date of first use: April 24, 2023  314317-OTU-1778770