The seven steps of strategic sourcing, in the model attributed to Kearney and paraphrased by nearly every published methodology, are: profile the category; assess the supply market; build the sourcing strategy; select suppliers and run the event; negotiate and award; integrate with the supply chain; and benchmark and review. The model's value is that each step names a deliverable, so a team can tell where an event is stuck. The median event takes 60 days from need to contract, per APQC, and most of that time sits in the first three steps.
Why This Matters
Sourcing events stall in two places that the seven-step list does not make obvious: supply-market assessment, which in practice covers only the suppliers a team already knows, and bid evaluation, where six quotes arrive in five formats. Knowing which step produces which artifact turns "the event is behind" into "we have no long list" or "the quotes are not comparable", each of which has a fix.
How It Works
| Step | What you actually produce |
|---|---|
| 1. Profile the category | A spend cut: volumes, part numbers, incumbents, contract end dates |
| 2. Assess the supply market | A qualified long list and a read on capacity and concentration |
| 3. Build the sourcing strategy | The decision: compete it, negotiate it, or protect it |
| 4. Select suppliers and run the event | An RFQ or RFP package, sent and tracked |
| 5. Negotiate and award | A like-for-like bid comparison and a signed contract |
| 6. Integrate with the supply chain | Updated part records, pricing, lead times, receiving instructions |
| 7. Benchmark and review | A scorecard and a date for the next review |
For a mid-market team without a category-management function, the honest version keeps steps 2, 4, 5 and 7, collapses 1 and 3 into one afternoon with twelve months of invoice history, and treats step 6 as a checklist. The process is a loop rather than a project: after step 7 the category comes back when the contract, the market or demand changes.
Step 2 is where the data now points. Businesses map about 60% of their supplier networks and only 18% have full end-to-end visibility, per QIMA's 2026 survey of over 1,000 sourcing leaders, so most supply-market assessments are assessments of suppliers already known. Step 5 is where events die in practice, because supplier-side quoting is still largely manual and quotes arrive incomparable. The full treatment of each step, and the rule for deciding whether a category deserves all seven, is in the practitioner's guide to strategic sourcing.
FAQ
Is the seven-step model the only one?
No, but the others are variants of it. Some methodologies merge steps or add a governance step; the deliverables are the same. What matters is that each step ends in an artifact you can point to.
Which step takes longest?
Steps 1 to 3 and the internal alignment around them account for most of the 60-day median. Suppliers are rarely the constraint; the time to agree what to buy, from whom to ask, and on what strategy is.
Where does the RFQ fit?
The RFQ round is step 4, one step inside the loop. Most buyers experience it as "sourcing", but it depends on steps 1 to 3 to be aimed at the right suppliers with the right package, and on step 5 to turn the replies into a decision.
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