Michal Sýkora
René Sharmila answered 1 year ago
A range of tools are available to help procurement professionals to take full advantage of the digital. These tools cater to various needs, including SRM, negotiation and decision-making, contract management, procure-to-pay, and financial performance.
Supplier Relationship Management systems offer valuable features such as supplier onboarding, effective management of profitable suppliers, risk mitigation, and continuous improvement implementation.
It’s worth noting that SRM is often an integral part of procure-to-pay and source-to-pay suites. Unfortunately, the importance of supplier relationship management in consulting is sometimes overlooked, even though it plays a crucial role.
Linking consulting performance to your preferred supplier list and utilizing supplier relationship management is the initial step towards effective category management.
While most systems in the market address specific needs, it’s helpful to consider industry leaders like Basware, as well as emerging challengers such as SourceDay or Vizbl.
Negotiation and decision-making systems are typically integrated with strategic sourcing or source-to-pay solutions rather than being standalone offerings. They facilitate bidding through real-time or reverse options, fostering healthy competition among providers.
Some solutions, like Digiproc, focus on automating supplier negotiations, pricing, and contractual terms. These solutions seamlessly integrate with contract management systems, which incorporate contracts into the overall spend management process.
Contract management systems enable buyers to generate contracts from templates, automatically populate supplier information, and share documents using tools like Word, DocuSign, Adobe Sign, or others.
They provide visibility and a historical record throughout the contract’s lifespan and manage important alerts. Solutions like Pandadoc, PRM360, or i-Procure offer such functionality.
Procure-to-pay solutions offer an all-in-one platform that combines procurement, invoicing, payments, and cash management. Mature companies in this field, such as Precoro, Coupa, and SAP Ariba, can provide comprehensive answers to your needs.
Financial performance solutions replace manual spreadsheet inputting, project tracking, and savings estimations associated with procurement activities. They capture savings from inception to confirmation and enable real-time forecasting and reporting.
These solutions often incorporate advanced analysis models to easily analyze and categorize your spending data. Mainstream players like Ivalua, Spend HQ, and Simphoni offer these capabilities.
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