These are valid community relations issues, but need to be thought through as to how they are implemented. Such a commitment does not mean that the client needs to deal with all local suppliers. Instead, by focusing on the best local suppliers, or the best regionally suppliers, the client both underscores the commitment to the community and the requirement that suppliers need to meet certain standards in order to supply. Care should be taken to avoid commodity areas where local suppliers traditionally charge high margins; instead, seek out bright, aggressive suppliers with low overhead and active business flows.

It costs too much to change suppliers, just to reduce the total number In actuality, few suppliers are embedded or unavoidably-continuing suppliers. Most are continuing suppliers because they are the suppliers to whom people always go to for the same type of thing, time after time. Here, Online Biddings, coupled with e-Commerce tools such as EDI and electronic catalogs can break that habit, by channeling purchases to the newly-chosen supplier. Where there are truly embedded suppliers, close work with the requestors can often show them that better pricing and service can be made available, by their lending their commodity expertise to a Purchasing effort to meet their specific needs more fully. The key is to have the requestors fully spell out what their needs are, in an objective manner. Then, requestors would participate with Purchasing in making the final supplier selection. In these types of situations, the biases of requestors evolve toward understanding the value of the Purchasing contribution, especially when they are able to participate with Purchasing in the process.