Supplier Enablement continues to be one of the top priorities as well as challenges
Supplier Enablement (SE) continues to be one of the top priorities as well as a challenge for organization looking at transforming their procurement office and gain better visibility into their supplier relationship by increasing their spend under management. With the meltdown in Global economy, challenges are doubled but still the priorities overweigh these challenges.
SE is priority since it reduces overall procurement / Accounts Payable operationing cost and it also encompasses many different elements of Source to Pay processes -e-RFX and online auctions in Sourcing, Collaborative Contract life cycle management, punch-out capabilities in content management, collaborative procurement, collection of supplier data and finally transmission of procurement documents among buyers and suppliers.
SE is challenging because of technology requirements / adoption, investments and most importantly it requires collaboration across multiple organizations. Multiply these challenges with globalization, disruption in supply chain dynamics driven by supplier / buyer expectation, business models, system and processes and also economy meltdown. With continuous evolution of the procurement technology landscape, organizations aim to innovate in their procurement business, operations and technologies and can at times embark on a strategic shift, moving away from niche players as part of enterprise application consolidation. Caught in the middle of the change - With these market realities, supplier enablement, considered to be a bull of cost saving, becomes bearish in nature if technology utilization is based on the platform. For example, an organization using the Ariba application typically utilizes Ariba Supplier Network for supplier enablement and an organizational decision to move away from Ariba can make the established enablement framework obsolete, thereby propelling the entire community to undergo a painstaking and costly transition process, which might turn out to be unfruitful in due course of time because of high costs incurred resulting in low cost to benefit ratios, thereby ultimately affecting the bottom line.
Can organization dampen disruption in the supplier eco system by de-coupling supplier enablement from procurement execution? I strongly feel it is achievable and this will be the way forward. By doing so, organization can enhance efficiency in supplier enablement by confining ripples caused due to changes from innovation in the procurement business and operations, and a shift in technology, thereby transforming supplier enablement to a shared service oriented architecture, which would make the process of switching to newer technology or a newer platform a lot less painstaking, also helping maintain the integrity of the system as a whole.
