Digitalization of sourcing is the process of leveraging digital technologies to conduct all elements of the sourcing process such as finding and evaluating suppliers, awarding contracts, and monitoring supplier performance. Advanced tools are necessary to keep up with this ever-changing industry, and digitalization is power.
You may think your company is already taking advantage of the digital revolution, but the difference between digitalization today and previous digital efforts is system integration. Most large organizations have thousands of suppliers that require interactions regarding profile maintenance, contact information, supply risk event responses, etc. When you combine the number of trading partners with the varied forms of interactions, it’s easy to see how complex the information flows can be in supply base management and why digitalization is critical to processing so much data.
Instead of spending considerable time and effort retrospectively and manually analyzing your sourcing data, real-time reports on a wealth of metrics are simply a click away. Imagine being able to find the following data with the click of a button:
- Savings generated
- Number of sourcing events run
- Sourcing cycle time
- Number of suppliers participating
- Categories covered
- And much much more ...
Sourcing professionals are essentially automating and streamlining processes through digitalization, enabling them to speed up each project cycle time and increase the percentage of spend under management. Sourcing processes can be more easily standardized using workflow technology, and management can access project status dashboards to see which projects are on time or behind schedule. As the entire process takes place on one platform, there’s no need to be constantly digging around for emails and hunting through spreadsheets for audits. All the data is in one place.
The benefits of digitalization are already widely known, but just how should one go about digitalizing sourcing? We put together a quick list of do's and don'ts:
The Do's of Digitalization
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Do make sure to get key stakeholders and users involved at an early stage.
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Do keep it simple.
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Do remember that technology alone is not the solution.
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Do maximize user-adoption and throughput.
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Do make it easy.
The Don'ts of Digitalization
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Don’t be too feature-centric.
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Don’t try jumping across the stream in one go. Use stepping stones.
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Don’t rely on system demos alone.
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Don’t forget about selecting the right provider, as well as the right system.
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Don’t forget what you’ll be judged on.
Digitalizing sourcing successfully doesn’t just mean selecting the right system. It’s about selecting the right provider too. To learn more about the Do's and Don'ts of Digitalization, download our whitepaper here:
