Few people understand how hard it is for purchasing and supply chain people to meet enough vendors. They “shop for a living” but it’s not that easy to meet their objectives of getting the best and most innovative deals for their companies, and to build a strong base of reliable, high-quality and diverse suppliers.

Many of us have to sell our business products and services, and it sounds much easier to have the power to authorize purchases. However, purchasing people usually work within tight regulations and under management scrutiny. It is also much harder than it sounds find and develop suppliers to build a fair, transparent, competitive process.

Procurement departments usually have specific targets for buying from small business, women-owned business and minority-owned business suppliers. Purchasing professionals spend a lot of time and money searching for such vendors, and working to build relationships with them.

Vendors or suppliers often feel as if there is a huge field of competitors, yet purchasing specialists may receive very few bids on contracts, or find that they get these from the same companies, over and over again.

Buyers need vendors for other reasons. A company’s purchasing people are a very important information source about what is “out there” for their companies. They stay current on trends, options, standards, levels of demand, economic climate, shortages, and competition. This often comes from having good relationships with a strong field of vendors.

As a director of the International Business Summit, and a member of FMSDC, I meet many people who are in purchasing for large organizations. They often struggle to find local and minority-owned small businesses, because such companies often do not go though the process of registering their company size or ownership.

This is a free process for those with the time to do the course and complete the paperwork, or an inexpensive and simple process for those who work with consultants like me.

IBS 2010′s longest list of acceptances to date is from purchasing and supply chain people, especially from supplier diversity and small business supplier professionals. Some of the chambers of commerce and trade associations involved in IBS include:

1. British-American: 180 people and businesses. www.babctampabay.org
2. Caribbean-American: 2018 people and businesses. www.cacctb.com
3. Chinese-American: 280 people and businesses. www.ccctb.com
4. French-American: 380 people and businesses. www.framco.org
5. Indo-American: 2875 people and businesses. www.indo-us.org
6. Hispanic Chamber: www.tampahispanicchamber.com
7. Philippine-American: 3,875 people and businesses. www.paccoftampabay.com
8. Scandinavian Baltic: 242 people and businesses. www.scandbalt.org
9. Swedish-American: www.sacc-greaterorlando-tampabay.org

The Plenary Address will focus on how Small Businesses can work with larger companies. Dr Rengen Li of Coca Cola is writing a book on this subject. In one of the break-out workshops, SBDC USF will present the bottom line business case for how local, small and minority business participation in supply chains add up to major money.