But beware: Shooting for goals at face value can sometimes blow up in your face, especially if the goal is trimming money from the purchasing and procurement budget.

Case in point: You’re charged with reducing the purchasing budget by a specific amount, $XXX — without any loss in quality when it comes to suppliers and your purchasing performance.

Managers higher on the food chain often believe this is easily accomplished: Replace those expensive, old suppliers with cheaper, newer ones.

Uh, not this time.

Sure, you’re looking hard for suppliers that will out-perform your current suppliers — but they could very well end up being your current suppliers.

Your criteria remain consistent:

• on-time deliveries
• low rates of material defects
• high supplier service performance
• internal customer satisfaction, and
• lower prices.

Good news: You may not need to search far and wide.

Given the current economic climate, it could be an ideal time for you to negotiate with existing suppliers.

They might be more willing to make certain concessions, rather than lose all of your business.

One note of caution: Be sure you’re keeping track — metrics — against benchmarked performance, to prove in dollars and cents that you’ve saved money and improved purchasing and procurement performance.