Purchasing is a vital part of any business. The primary role of a purchasing section is to get the business raw materials required for it's day to day running at the cheapest possible prices.
By developing a strategic focus, the purchasing function will look towards strategic sourcing to find suppliers who can both benefit the business in terms of offering lower prices, but also to engineer a partnership where suppliers are motivated to improve product quality, reliability, reacting to the business needs in time of growth and decline, but to also aid the business with research in new product development.