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Application services encompasses multiple services across the traditional application life cycle and DevOps, including application development (build), run, quality assurance, and modernization/transformation services. This category strategy template is ready to use, offering editable frameworks for internal assessment and detailed industry and market category overviews to assist category managers, procurement professionals, and CPOs in creating an informed category strategy for application services.

The template can be customized by category managers with internal category information, such as spend, suppliers, and subcategory overview. The category manager can also use industry and market insights provided in this template to build a strong supply base understanding. A category strategy’s goal is to create an action plan for effective category management, and this template provides the requisite tools, frameworks, and information to create a robust strategy. Best-in-class procurement organizations effectively leverage such tools and techniques to drive continuous improvements in their categories.

Scope

All industries and geographies

Category in focus: application services

Contents

In this category strategy, we provide templates based on a four-step process to assist in the creation of a category strategy:

• Define internal needs: defining category maturity and objectives, creating a buyer profile to gauge the current state of the supply base and predict future demand, and total cost modeling
• Understand the market: building an understanding of the industry and supply base by evaluating aspects such as market trends, key suppliers, major delivery locations, pricing trends, performance benchmarks, and category risks
• Determine sourcing strategy: deciding between an in-house versus outsourced model for the category and identifying best practices and value levers to drive category efficiency
• Create action plan: identifying and prioritizing projects and driving them toward execution