Where to start with eProcurement

January 17th, 2017

Choosing the right categories for the right reasons

 

Today’s post is by Dave Wenig, Regional Sales Manager at SafeSourcing.

When an organization begins leveraging eProcurement for its sourcing needs, there are many great ways to select the initial categories. In today’s post, we’ll discuss the three most common considerations that we see and often recommend to our clients who are either beginning their utilization of eProcurement or are looking to strategically plan their sourcing schedule.

One consideration when choosing categories has to be the spend. We recommend considering large spend categories as they are often a great way to reduce costs significantly. While the reward of sourcing your large spend categories will be great, bear in mind that these categories are likely to be more complex.

Another consideration is the number of suppliers in the category. We work with our customers to identify and understand categories with high supplier counts. Once we understand the category better, we often find that there is opportunity to reduce the number of suppliers. Often there are many suppliers who are all providing similar products or services. Reducing the number of suppliers creates an opportunity to better control the category and to create a larger opportunity for savings by consolidating the spend as well.

A third consideration that we recommend is to identify quick categories that can be sourced right away. These categories should be of a relatively lower complexity, but should also still be categories where there is sufficient spend and very large savings opportunity. We identify these quick categories as great areas to begin and to help build momentum for the overall eProcurement initiative within the organization.

Ultimately, where to start is driven by your organization’s spend and is best decided after careful consideration including analysis of spend data and budgets. We work with our customers to develop this plan with them and more often than not, the outcome is a plan that has a healthy mix of each of the three types of categories that we considered in this post.

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 with your eProcurement planning. For more information, please contact SafeSourcing.

We look forward to your comments.

 

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