Within the procurement process, strategic sourcing is employed to coordinate all procurement activities with a view to move from tactical procurement to strategic procurement and proactive long term planning. For this purpose organisations aim to constantly improve their sourcing process through collaborative relationships with external resources and productive supply markets to reduce their cost base and increase the value of goods and services for their consumers. However, it must be remembered that procurement is not a ‘risk-free’ activity and organisations must take care to ensure that risks are minimised and opportunities maximised in the procurement process.

For an organisation of your choice, you are asked:

(a) To critically examine the procurement function and sourcing methods.

(b) To demonstrate the key risks that the selected organisation faces in procuring goods and services through the production of a risk assessment.

Please do use diagrams, illustrations, tables, graphics etc. wherever these are helpful, and remember that these do not count towards your word limit. If you do use these, please do not put them in the appendices if they are part of your discussion. Appendices are the appropriate places to put supporting material, however, remember if the reader is satisfied with the main points of your discussion; the supporting information within the appendices may not even be reviewed.

Please try to use theory explicitly at all stages, but do not spend too much time describing a theory. While you must be explicit about the theories, models, techniques etc. that you use, you can assume that the reader is familiar with them. What the reader requires is evidence of your ability to understand and apply the theory and learn from in order to support the development of your findings and/or ideas.

You must cite all sources on which you have relied, for example textbooks, journal articles, web pages etc. using theHarvard Bibliographicreferencing system. If you do not cite all sources, then you may be accused of plagiarism, and that may endanger your success in passing the module. If you are in any doubt about how to reference your work, please obtain guidance from the library and/or your academic librarian(s) for this module.

You will also need to take the following into account when completing your assignment:

• Quality of executive summary (does it give a brief complete summary of your paper for an executive to read?)

• Establishment of relevant theory (e.g. what do we mean by global sourcing?)

• Allocation of credit and sources used (have I included references and citations to the material I have used?)

• Clarity of argument

• Overall report presentation including spelling and grammar

• Adherence to nominated word limit (+/- 10%)

• Word processed (letter size 12, times new roman, 1.5 space), fully referenced (Harvard Referencing System)