Value analysis is a systematic review of the production, purchasing and product design processes to reduce overall product costs. This can be accomplished through a variety of activities, including the following:
- Designing products to use lower-tolerance parts that are less expensive
- Switching to lower-cost components
- Standardizing parts across product platforms in order to achieve volume discounts
- Altering production processes to minimize the amount of production cycle time, thereby reducing labor costs
- Introducing automation to strip labor costs out of the production process
- Altering product packaging to lower its cost while still protecting the product The process is not a wholesale attack on costs. Costs are only reduced when the result will not im-pact the perceived level of quality experienced by customers, or the level of customer satisfaction.
Reference: CIPS study guide page 160-163
LO 3, AC 3.4

Using Porter's value chain helps procurement professionals know what are direct and indirect costs of supplier. Information on direct and indirect costs will have been collected as part of the market analysis.
Information sources that may help include the following:
- Company annual reports
- Market data
- Technical data
- Request for information
- Plan visits
- Discount lists
Market data is the information that is collected and analysed by specialist organisations like Mintel, Gartner, Forrester,...
Reference: CIPS study guide page 98-105
LO 2, AC 2.3

There are three major types of buying situations, which are new purchase, modified rebuy and straight rebuy.
Three factors make the buying situations be different from the others, customers may face different problems in these situations.
A new purchase is a situation requiring the purchase of a product for the very first time.
A straight rebuy is when a company places a second order with a supplier that is identical to the first purchase it made.
A modified rebuy is when a company orders again from a supplier, but wants to change some as-pect of the order, such as the quantity, packaging, product features, or delivery times. The scenario above is an example of modified rebuy.
Reference:
- What is a straight rebuy example?
- CIPS study guide page 3-4

Internal stakeholders may contribute to defining needs and drafting the specification by using their technical expertise. In this scenario, IT team may consult procurement team on the technical specification of the software, including compatibility with company's current IT system.
Reference: CIPS study guide page 173-174
LO 3, AC 3.4