Strategy, Employees, Organization, Method and Tools, Processes and Systems can be named as the internal factors which determine organizational performance. Embedded in a corporate organization and interfering with market players there seem to exist further factors, which need to be considered. Since the end of last century corporations experienced economically critical situations, e.g. global finance crisis, war in Iraq, resource scarcity showed enormous impact on global economy and forced even best positioned purchasing organizations to design and implement counter measures to increase their efficiency and effectiveness. Besides significant market disturbance principal market approaches and the interface to corporate indicate further factors. This paper examines which external factors besides the above explained internal factors influence the positioning of a purchasing organization, as the initial analysis step for a cost optimization program. Based on a literature research 4 external influencing factors, a so called 4-Corner-Model will be introduced, subsequently per deductive reasoning typical challenges exposed and counter measures derived. Though internal factors create efficiency and effectiveness, external determine how internal factors should be designed and applied. Thus in order to holistically examine purchasing positioning an analysis of external factors is essential as cost optimization projects often miss their intended goals due to the fact, that purchasing positioning is not carried out properly and wrong conclusion are drawn. The outcome of this paper will help decision makers to understand the real cause of purchasing performance level based on external factors to subsequently design a target oriented approach of purchasing and cost optimization projects.
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