To begin with, the do it yourself approach or build it yourself approach has historically had the perceived benefit of saving a company time and money when compared to offerings consisting of license fees and professional services fees that are associated with a 3rd party solution provider . The prevailing thought historically has been that having existing staff involved in handling this process, company?s will be able to leverage resources that are already in place, and as such save time and money.

With this approach, there is also a sense of having more control of the process when it occurs in-house. Doing it yourself means you can monitor and assure that the process for finding the right suppliers, product specifications and other related tasks are done exactly how the company desires and also feed a development process that is by you and for you. In most cases this means doing things the way you have always done them with a slightly broadened focus for now. For many people, these benefits will be enough to entice them to try themselves rather than contact 3rd party solutions providers.

The potential downside to doing things yourself, however, is that the same resources that are to be leveraged to do this work will need to be compensated for as long as they are in the company?s employment. Likewise they will also need to be given sick days, vacation days, health and other benefits. To go along with an unending expense stream to support this process, there is the possibly that resources once educated will leave the company or be transferred to another job within the company and other resources will need to brought in and trained to do this work as well as a result of the intellectual or knowledge drain.

Another risk of doing it yourself is that the tools that are available to the public, such as internet searching or using the phonebook to find suppliers can be unreliable and time-consuming. And although the internet has a fairly broad view of the world, local directories are very limited in their informational scope. These methods also have no real way to qualify potential suppliers and unless an easy to use tool is created in-house to aid in this process, there is no forum for suppliers to competitively bid real-time in order to win the business other than email and telephony which means that there are potentially thousands of savings dollars lost as well as significant information drain for every category sourced.

The do it yourself approach for some businesses at some times seems like the only viable approach when compared to involving 3rd party solution providers, however, when the added cost and other related risks are added to the mix, many companies have found that the difference in final cost or TCO is very minimal and in many cases higher when compared to the all of the benefits that a 3rd party solution could provide.

In tomorrows post we will explore part III of this blog will cover the 3rd party approach.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

I often have to ask myself the same questions in both my professional and personal life.

1. Do we take on this task ourselves because I believe it will cost us less
2. Do we stand to pay more money than external professionals would cost in the long run by trying to do it myself?”

This decision is constantly debated and pondered by all, whether it is in their business or in ones personal life. While many factors go into making these decisions, they usually end up being decided by one thing…..money. What is the cost of the path chosen?

Specifically, in the area of e-Procurement, there are also a multitude of options. Below are two.

1. Option One is to have existing staff members regularly search for new potential suppliers to provide quotes for an item or service the business wishes to purchase.
2. Option Two is to purchase a solution that will provide a mix of software that can be installed or used in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS). This may also require professional services that will assist in RFIs, supplier research, and will also provide a competitive environment for the suppliers to submit bids on the business in the form of a reverse auction.

Tomorrow, Part I of our discussion will focus the pros and cons of a Do-It-Yourself approach. On Wednesday Part II will cover the approach of involving a third party solutions provider.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

I often have to ask myself the same questions in both my professional and personal life.

1. Do we take on this task ourselves because I believe it will cost us less
2. Do we stand to pay more money than external professionals would cost in the long run by trying to do it myself??

This decision is constantly debated and pondered by all, whether it is in their business or in ones personal life. While many factors go into making these decisions, they usually end up being decided by one thing?..money. What is the cost of the path chosen?

Specifically, in the area of e-Procurement, there are also a multitude of options. Below are two.

1. Option One is to have existing staff members regularly search for new potential suppliers to provide quotes for an item or service the business wishes to purchase.
2. Option Two is to purchase a solution that will provide a mix of software that can be installed or used in the form of Software as a Service (SaaS). This may also require professional services that will assist in RFIs, supplier research, and will also provide a competitive environment for the suppliers to submit bids on the business in the form of a reverse auction.

Tomorrow, Part I of our discussion will focus the pros and cons of a Do-It-Yourself approach. On Wednesday Part II will cover the approach of involving a third party solutions provider.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

This author believes that there are a lot of great posts out there on the blogosphere relative to procurement. It appears in blogs, websites, white papers, wiki?s, webcasts, social networks, tweets and pod casts. The important issue that continues to concern this author is that enough companies are not using the many e-negotiation and other low cost hosted tools available to them that reuse or republishing of this data is not only important, it is imperative because if one company reads, watches, prints and uses any of it and then executes because of it any or all of the following can and should happen.

1. Profits can and should improve
2. Quality can and should improve
3. Product Safety can and should improve
4. Environmental impact can and should improve
5. Prices can be compressed
6. New sources of supply can be found
7. Risk can be mitigated
8. Evergreening of contracts can be held in check
9. Existing jobs can be protected
10. New jobs can be created.

If these were the only reasons to try and get out the message as to the stunning effect that today?s procurement tools can have on an organization it would be enough. But we all know there are many more good reasons beyond the ten listed above.

This author regularly reposts two blogs titled ?Here are twenty reasons why all retailers should use E-Procurement tools now? and ?Twenty steps to running high quality e-procurement events?.

The message in both of these posts is as important today as it was when originally posted 17 months ago and with new readers visiting and following every day reposts of important messages are a good strategy.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

This author prefers to take the position when confronted with this specific objection that “The DIFFICULT we can do at once; the impossible will take us a little longer. If we look at all of our roadblocks in this way, the road forward does not seem as formidable.

In the e-procurement space, teams are very often underfunded and understaffed particularly in low tier one and tier two companies. As such what you are not hearing is that the organization can’t change. More than likely what you are hearing is an internalized frustration with the fact that there is not enough time to evaluate new processes or tools and still get the demanding job they already have done in a successful fashion. In other words; we don’t do things that way because we don’t have the time or the commitment from senior management to do things in any way other than the way we have done things for years.

Confronted with this situation requires understanding and empathy. Understanding means having done the proper research of the company that you are going to be meeting with. Empathy means understanding your prospects emotions and feelings. In other words it is the ability to “put yourself into his or hers shoes”.

A sales pitch of I can save you money immediately may sound like a stunning offering. Followed up by we have done it for others may even sound better. However, how this resonates with your prospect is going to be determined by other factors that can only be understood by understanding their business. In the procurement space that means understanding the entire procure to pay process and its ramifications on your prospects company.

Safesourcing understands retail from the farm to the kitchen table. Let us help your company source better quality products from a more diverse list of suppliers that support safety, traceability and support environmental best practices.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.

This author prefers to take the position when confronted with this specific objection that ?The DIFFICULT we can do at once; the impossible will take us a little longer. If we look at all of our roadblocks in this way, the road forward does not seem as formidable.

In the e-procurement space, teams are very often underfunded and understaffed particularly in low tier one and tier two companies. As such what you are not hearing is that the organization can?t change. More than likely what you are hearing is an internalized frustration with the fact that there is not enough time to evaluate new processes or tools and still get the demanding job they already have done in a successful fashion. In other words; we don?t do things that way because we don?t have the time or the commitment from senior management to do things in any way other than the way we have done things for years.

Confronted with this situation requires understanding and empathy. Understanding means having done the proper research of the company that you are going to be meeting with. Empathy means understanding your prospects emotions and feelings. In other words it is the ability to “put yourself into his or hers shoes”.

A sales pitch of I can save you money immediately may sound like a stunning offering. Followed up by we have done it for others may even sound better. However, how this resonates with your prospect is going to be determined by other factors that can only be understood by understanding their business. In the procurement space that means understanding the entire procure to pay process and its ramifications on your prospects company.

Safesourcing understands retail from the farm to the kitchen table. Let us help your company source better quality products from a more diverse list of suppliers that support safety, traceability and support environmental best practices.

We look forward to and appreciate your comments.