News

Thanks for all the support getting 2021 Spend, Savings, and Rebates closed out in Q1 of this year.  Overall, USA members had a pretty good year in comparison to prior years.  Rebates were up almost 5%, First Cost Savings was up 8%, and Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) was up by 13%.  Overall Return on Investment (ROI) for the members came in at 33.92.

While USA believes 2021 was a very good year despite all the Covid 19 challenges, we also believe that we can do better.  USA and our members work hard to ensure we have agreements with our supplier partners that create a win/win environment for everyone involved.  Our agreements have tiered rebates to promote spend which yields more savings.  To accomplish increased savings, it’s vitally important for the USA members to channel their spend towards the USA agreements.  We call that Contract Utilization.  The converse of that is contract leakage.  Contract leakage may be necessary in some cases for strategic reasons, however because spend is so precious these days it’s important for all of us to target our spend towards the USA agreements which in turn increase savings.

USA will be sharing something new with the Supply Chain, Site Rep teams, and USA BOD in the coming weeks called “What If” rebate scenarios.  These scenarios will show “what if” we were able to target enough spend to get us to the first rebate tier or what if we spent enough to get us to the second or third rebate tier.  Our supplier partners would certainly appreciate the spend and our members would enjoy higher rebates and first cost savings.  Contract utilization is the key to success along with showing and educating plant staff on all the goods and services available within our USA agreements.  Now that Covid restrictions have lessened, USA is hopeful to have Supplier Fairs at a couple of plants in the Summer or Fall this year to give our supplier partners a chance to meet and greet their key stakeholders, build relationships, and stimulate new spend and savings opportunities.

Suppliers, let’s also not forget to get those post 2022 Spring outage TCO events in the system to show how your company is providing that extra value, support, and documentable savings to the members.  We are ready to make 2022 spend and savings bigger and better for all of us.