Should Costing & Cost Analysis for Procurement Training Course

The Should Costing & Cost Analysis for Procurement Training Course equips procurement, category, contracts, and cost professionals with the methods and practical tools needed to estimate what goods, services, and projects should cost, analyze supplier prices and cost structures, and use fact-based cost insight to negotiate fair prices, control spend, and create value. In government entities, ministries, public authorities, oil and gas, petrochemicals, utilities, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, and large corporations, procurement teams frequently rely on price comparisons between bids or historical prices without understanding the underlying cost drivers. This limits their ability to challenge prices, assess cost reasonableness in single-source and limited-competition purchases, evaluate price escalation claims, and identify genuine cost reduction opportunities. The course covers should costing and cost analysis from principles to negotiation and supplier collaboration. Participants learn the difference between price analysis and cost analysis, the principles of should costing and clean-sheet cost modeling, and how to identify and analyze cost drivers. The program then addresses data sources and cost research, including commodity and price indices, labor rates, productivity, bills of materials, and process routings, and building should-cost models for materials, manufacturing processes, labor, overheads, logistics, duties, packaging, selling and administrative costs, and profit margins. Participants also examine should costing for services and projects, activity-based costing, learning curves, price analysis techniques, price escalation and indexation clauses, open-book and cost transparency arrangements, cost reasonableness assessment in single-source and public procurement, using should-cost insights in negotiation, value analysis and supplier cost reduction programs, links to total cost of ownership, and governance, confidentiality, and ethics in cost analysis. The course is delivered through hands-on Excel should-cost modeling exercises, cost breakdown analysis of supplier quotations, price escalation evaluations, negotiation simulations, and case studies. Participants leave with a should-cost model template for goods, a services should-cost model template, a cost breakdown analysis worksheet, a price escalation and indexation evaluation tool, and a should-cost negotiation preparation guide.