Strategies to continue realizing savings
Today’s post is by Dave Wenig, Regional Sales Manager at SafeSourcing.
Recently, I wrote about “Enjoying the benefits of eProcurement.” In this post, I wanted to elaborate on that same topic. Specifically, my aim is to highlight strategies to perpetuate your enjoyment of the benefits of eProcurement while minimizing the impact on your organization.
Once you start enjoying the benefits of eProcurement in your organization, you may find an unusual challenge. You might feel that you are generating savings faster than you can actually realize those savings. As previously discussed in me last post, there are several reasons why you might feel that way, from sample reviews to internal discussions about the results. That said, you need a plan in place so that you continue to generate savings and so that you wind up with rogue spending outside of your eProcurement process.
One way to address this challenge is to have a clear understanding of your timelines. Work with your eProcurement partner to identify the milestones in your larger Procure-to-Pay lifecycle. Once you understand when each milestone will occur, you can better manage the timing of all projects. For example, you might be able to time lower-priority projects so that your team does not become inundated with samples. Properly timing these projects will also help keep the contracts from piling up as it comes time to begin working with a selected supplier.
Another way to address this challenge is to work closely with your eProcurement partner to identify areas in which you can take advantage of their expertise to streamline key steps in the Procure-to-Pay lifecycle. For example, are you leveraging your partner to help you track and manage sample requests? While this task may seem fairly routine, it is very important to the award of business decision making process and can also become time-intensive. Work with your eProcurement partner and ask them to help. Lean on them as you would an internal resource.
While these are not the only two ways to create efficiency in the eProcurement process, they are two great ways to ensure that your organization is constantly generating savings and is constantly enjoying lower costs as a result of eProcurement.
Dave Wenig is the Director of Sales, North America at SafeSourcing. Dave or any member of the experienced team at SafeSourcing would be happy to discuss how SafeSourcing . can help you attain and quickly realize savings. For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.
We look forward to your comments.
