Category management is not just a new name for strategic sourcing. Rather, strategic sourcing is one of the tools used by category teams to manage procurement expenditure to achieve mission value.
Unfortunately, much of the writing about strategic sourcing conflates it with category management, creating some misunderstanding about how the two are related. Detangling the definitions can help; though doing so necessarily simplifies processes that in practice are highly nuanced and often overlapping.
It’s worth the risk, however, in order to clarify what is strategic about strategic sourcing and how category management strategies are successfully executed.
Category management and strategic sourcing differ in scope, processes, data requirements, tools and outcomes.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2016/11/make-government-great-again-fix-procurement-system/133324
