Get the Sourcing process in order first …
A food redistribution firm was evaluating number of leading functionality rich IT sourcing tools as the solution to a painfully long and unreliable sourcing process. Thankfully, before committing on a tool a process analysis using PERT-CPM technique was able to bring out that the problems lay in the gamut of complicated and unnecessary process activities. The IT tool would have done little to improve the sourcing efficiency unless the underlying process was sorted out. During further analysis of the sourcing process it emerged that two process components, which added a great deal of complexity to the process were in fact largely unrelated to Sourcing and of little value add. One component dealt more with Order Management than Sourcing and the other was in reality a data validation process for the non sourced items bought from suppliers.
I think that before taking the IT plunge, it is important for sourcing organizations to identify and formalize the key process components and purge the low value add ones. Keeping the sourcing process honest and simple will help make the benefit versus cost equation look better for the IT solutions being considered.
