What Is Elastic Procurement™?
What is elastic procurement™ and who should care? CIOs will recognize the word “elastic” from cloud computing. Elastic procurement™ is a delivery model that is to Big Procurement technology systems what cloud computing was to the corporate data center. It lowers costs, eliminates complexity, and empowers staff. Before Amazon Web Services or Microsoft […]
What Are the Biggest Problems in Procurement?
What are the biggest problems in procurement? There are no shortage of them when you speak with people in different business lines within the organization. Suppliers aren’t enamored with the process, so much as resigned to it. Even procurement staff see it as the “Devil we know.” Here’s a list of some of the key […]
Managing Opportunity Costs Is More Important and More Difficult than Reducing Transactions Costs in Procurement
Why are opportunity costs more important than transactions costs? They’re larger. Why are opportunity costs more difficult to manage than transactions costs? They’re hidden. There is no line item for opportunity costs. There is only foregone revenue or higher costs than what the company could have realized in the future because of decisions made today. […]
Complexity and Price Volatility in Procurement
We’ve written previously about the conceptual difference between complexity and complication. “To say that a process is complex is the not the same thing as saying it is complicated.” For example, we can imagine the developer of a large mixed-use residential and commercial construction project. These undertakings can have upwards of twenty-five levels between the […]
What Is the ROI of a Procurement System?
When making any kind of a decision about digital transformation, people like to talk about the Return on Investment (ROI). What is the ROI of a procurement system? How can we think quantitatively and qualitatively about the costs and benefits? Imagine Betty Buyer. Her CFO tasked her with finding a new procurement system to replace […]
How Can We Improve the Performance of Procurement?
Historically, there has been a tradeoff between the strategic, internal connectivity of the generalist and the tactical, external expertise of the specialist. Generalists ended up running the show, while accomplished specialists remained in place. What if technology could resolve this tradeoff? How can we improve the performance of procurement generalists and buying specialists to make […]
What Is the Buyer’s Journey?
The right platform can accelerate sourcing, lower transaction costs, and lower opportunity costs. We wrote this post originally as a White Paper for the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO). The Buyer’s Journey Is Evolving Buying goods and services for public sector organizations is difficult. As this article in Forbes puts it, “Due to an abundance […]
How Can B2B Buyers Collaborate Across Organizations?
When multiple buyers collaborate to issue an RFP or RFQ jointly, it converts a one-to-many process into a many-to-many process with the attendant increase in benefits, offset by higher complexity. What if we could reduce the complexity to that of a regular RFP or RFQ? How Can B2B Buyers Collaborate Across Organizations? How can B2B […]
How Can We Improve the B2B Buyer’s Journey?
Buying goods or services for your business isn’t like buying things for yourself or your family. B2B buying is difficult. When you consume things as an individual, you may do some research, but you have a need and you decide quickly. It’s not necessary to have a deep relationship with the sales team or the […]
How Does Bureaucracy Affect Procurement?
Bureaucracy, for all its intent to protect the buyer, ends up hurting the buyer by limiting competition far more than it protects the buyer from bad actors.