External vendors are important part of the value chain.

If you take a close look at the business partner’s link at Family Dollar you will find the following statement:

“For 50 years, Family Dollar has provided our customer with value and convenience in easy to shop neighborhood locations. As we continue to grow and expand our vendors will play an increasingly important role.”

Family Dollar finds value by outsourcing its product sourcing and internal activities by using outside business partners.   Family Dollar uses Thomas Reuters to help do their tax accounting, audits, and share financial because they have less incentive to hide discrepancies or misrepresent facts like internal employees would.  The buying department relies on outside vendor to help them source goods because there are too many products to be experts in all areas or have the purchasing power of a well formed industry supplier. Many times you have National Brands next to private brands to add value to sales of private labels by comparison. By relying on competent external business partner to share the work load the internal people of the organization can use there time to focus on the internal operation and performance of the company as a whole.