Get the essential guide to the art of corporate buying, managing suppliers, and business results.
It’s 2016 and business has never moved faster. Roles like procurement and risk management have moved from administrative and compliance-based to heavily strategic.
The tools and processes are changing and it’s key to understand what’s happening–and why. Start 2016 Smarter dives deep into these issues, the future of business, and how to leverage the strength of open platforms for maximum results. Highlights include:
1) A new beginning for enterprise eProcurement
Procurement–through no fault of the people working in it–is broken. Consumer buying exists in a world of Amazons and Alibabas, but until recently corporate buying hasn’t had a comparable option. Consider the amount of time and bureaucracy invested in shifting through catalogs and prefered suppliers. Then include the amount of maverick spend brought on by these faulty tools and processes. It amounts to a lot of lost time and money.
The future is centered on the ability to buy anywhere, harnessing the power of the web. Start 2016 Smarter offers a deep look at the future of procurement and the legacy issues that brought us here.
2) Supplier and risk management must-dos
Suppliers are the backbone of a successful business. But for such an essential role, real-time information and supplier risk management have been lacking. This is unacceptable in an era of increasing demand for brand transparency and escalating fines for non-compliance.
Start 2016 Smarter covers the four biggest issues in the field of supplier and risk management. It addresses specific cases and provides actionable solutions. For example, the case of Target compromising the financial data of millions of people because of lax oversight of a heating and cooling vendor. The public fallout was huge and the fines are still piling up.
The future of supplier management is set to move the responsibility for managing supplier data from the buyer to the suppliers themselves. This paradigm shift will require new tools and mindsets. The tools themselves will have to pull and manage data in new ways, likely culminating in a shift away from siloed solutions and towards a platform model.
3) The rise of the platform and network effects
A network effect results when an increasingly large group experiences better outcomes as a result of the growth in size. Open platforms draw heavily on this phenomena, with a greater number of third-party apps, better UI, and more powerful predictive capabilities as a result of the high number of data points being fed in. The better the platform becomes, the more people and organizations want to join and the more pronounced the effect becomes.
This is relevant to 2016 because Information Technology and software are trending towards a platform-based future that’s never been closer. Start 2016 Smarter details what to look for in these solutions and how to leverage them for maximum business results.
It’s the power of the platform that will ultimately bring procurement, supplier management, and risk management under one roof, along with e-invoicing. This is the ultimate goal in achieving complete procure-to-pay. Get your copy to find out how it’s happening and you can benefit.
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