Why You Need A Strong Sourcing and Curation Strategy

As businesses grow and new ones pop up almost every day, creating a global cesspool of substance and commodities both tangible and intangible, there arises a need for something new, a desire for novelty and freshness at the best quality. 

However, this need for novelty is further accentuated by a growing phenomenon spurred by the accession of the space of the internet: attention. Attention spans have fallen from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds today, smaller than a goldfish.

Thus, in contemporary times, two questions come out to be the most relevant: how do we capture attention, and how do we keep it? A major answer to this is sourcing strategy and curation strategy, an appropriate combination of which can boost both the outreach and the value of an organization.

The need for procurement planning and sourcing strategy

Well, that sounds great, but how does sourcing strategy work? To put it simply, a sourcing strategy is a procurement process by which the value of an organization is identified— a roadmap to procure goods and services. Go up a level, and it can be defined as the comprehensive development of channels of supply securing the best possible cost by considering every activity within procurement. 

This is a long-term process where businesses constantly analyze both their internal sourcing and external markets to achieve both the lowest possible (and best) cost and reduce risk to the supply chain but a drastic amount. What’s imperative is what makes sourcing strategy so vital to an organization, expounded here:

Direct costs

This is the most basic and yet the most alluring benefit of sourcing strategy, as it benefits both the buyers and the suppliers involved. By negotiation, procurement officials can manipulate costs and possibly reduce prices (especially for high-volume purchases), thus enabling the organization to generate more lucrative profits. By selling a considerable fraction of their output, the supplier also gets long-term cash flow visibility, which is a valuable criterion in a company’s comprehension of their finance.

Risk management

By creating close supply relationships that consequently aid in quick and efficient problem resolution, sourcing strategy can help to minimize risks faced by an organization in their supply chain. Thus, as a supply chain management process, it productively optimizes effective conversation between businesses and their suppliers, once again proving to be beneficial both ways.

Stability in supply

The previous point entails stability in supply, as by building stable partnerships, future procurement needs are taken into consideration as well. All hazards about supply— such as running out of supply or not having some at the correct time— that could potentially harm consumer opinion are removed.

Boosting marketing

Constantly creating one’s content can be a long, tedious task, and for many small groups, it can take up even more precious time. For this, curation provides a huge solution as one isn’t pressured to keep providing a steady influx of original content, thus providing a great boost to a team.

Building an audience

Adding to meticulously gathered information with one’s thoughts and opinions encourages conversation as it adds external context to it. This helps in building an audience, and by carefully studying what they respond to best, one can act in that direction and consequently further their reach. Content curation has shown to yield great results in terms of brand exposure when executed well, leading us to our next point:

Increasing brand awareness

Growing brand awareness and exposure is an awfully difficult process that is somewhat (if not wholly) simplified when content curation is used. Great quality content is required to better brand reach, which can be crafted as per one’s needs and added a small ‘personal touch’ which significantly helps to connect with an audience and, in turn, increase brand awareness. Curation is a powerful scythe that, when yielded fittingly, can provide the best of results.

Observing trends

By constantly consuming information, content curation leads one to explore a plethora of sources that can help glean shifts in trends both in the viewpoint of the audience and in the market. This can, in turn, lead to a heightened awareness of the shifts in trends prevalent in the contemporary scenario and help curate even better content that reaches the audience.

Impacting online visibility

Content curation goes a long way in raising online visibility— many reported an upsurge in online engagement and visibility once people began to fittingly curate content after monitoring audiences. High-quality content will undoubtedly boost rankings in search engines, creating more traffic and overall great visibility. 

Curation strategy and its application

Together, these benefits form a cohesive supply structure that remains highly effective in forming secure relationships that ensure stable and advantageous supply. As mentioned before, this with curation strategy is extremely helpful in outreach and value— but… what is curation strategy? 

Here’s the simple answer: it is the process of gathering relevant information about various topics of interest, which are then distributed to appeal to a target audience. In many ways, curation makes the brand stand out in terms of content and reveals the scope of expertise of an organization while connecting to the audience they gain. 

It has constantly been stressed that, at this day and age, curation becomes necessary to provide a formidable competition in the playing ground, as there is a constant need for innovation that nothing captures better than content curation. 

It is a marketing practice that has proven to be beneficial for both curators, the brand as a whole, and the audience. So, why should one invest in a content curation team at all? Here are a few benefits that curation entails:

Conclusion

A large scope and extent in content allows for more liberation and thus a greater quality of content being shared, a great help for the organization in marketing. A perfect cocktail of marketing (employed by the infallible curation strategy) and the sourcing strategy that helps pave the way to an easy supply chain within the organization itself, is probably one of the best possible executions for a brand. It becomes clear that curation, when combined with a well-executed sourcing strategy managing the inside, can help enhance every aspect of one’s organization, from audience relationships to commercial benefits. 

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