Source-to-contract technology helps procurement teams become more agile, improves visibility and protects business continuity. It facilitates the upstream procurement process by standardizing and automating sourcing activities along with a variety of other benefits such as the following:
Leverage Sourcing Data Quickly, Easily and Accurately
Instead of spending considerable time and effort manually analyzing sourcing data, simply click a button and run real-time reports on:
- Number of sourcing events run
- Sourcing cycle time
- Number of participating suppliers
- Savings generated
- Categories covered
- Contract status
- Contract expiry dates
- Supplier accreditation etc.
- Supplier pricing from previous sourcing events
- Supplier pricing trends
- And more
Additionally, the potential for human error in the data collection process is eradicated. With such quick and easy access to accurate sourcing data, decisions can be made and strategies devised when you need, rather than waiting for when the business gets around to it. Your decisions will be based on documented factual statistics and not on intuition. Finally, benefit-tracking reports can show the true value and impact of your sourcing team, rather than savings figures being diluted (i.e. reinvestment, etc.) by the time annual figures get to the board.
Increase Spend Under Management
By digitalizing sourcing, procurement professionals are essentially automating and streamlining processes, enabling them to speed up each project cycle time and ultimately increase their percentage of spend under management. For example:
- Click on a category and all suppliers registered to that category will appear, ready to be invited to the sourcing event
- The software will collate and analyze supplier responses, providing buyers one comprehensive report with all qualitative and quantitative data compiled ready for further analysis
- Push RFx data through to another round of bidding or to an eAuction
eAuctions have proven time and again to increase savings and significantly reduce negotiation cycle time without compromising quality. The average e-auction lasts less than one hour. Managing the supplier on-boarding and approval process is highly streamlined as suppliers independently register by responding to questionnaires and uploading key documents and then await approval.
Increased Internal and Supplier Compliance
Digitalization effectuates more structure, visibility and control to daily activities. Sourcing processes can be more easily standardized and followed using workflow technology, and management can access project status dashboards to see which projects are on time and which are behind schedule. There are many benefits by having all data readily available online with reports, notifications and flags to alert the buyer of none-compliance.
Improved Audits
As the whole process (supplier on-boarding, RFx, messaging, supplier responses, award decisions, internal notes, etc.) takes place on one platform, there is no need to be constantly digging around for emails and hunting through spreadsheets collating information for audits. All the data is in one place, and audit logs show what has been done, who did it and when.
