So You're in a Fight with IT...

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Hi readers,

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 5 procurement jobs that caught my eye

• So you’re in a fight with the IT department… Here’s how to fix it!

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🌙 Sunday Night Note

So You’re In a Fight with IT…?

You’re a digitally-minded procurement professional (duh… You read this newsletter).

You’ve done your market research for a ProcureTech solution to support a given vertical in your procurement process (e.g. a sourcing solution).

You’ve reached out to vendors, you’ve compared key functionalities, you’ve gotten pricing, you’ve done your due diligence (you’re a serious procurement professional after all...).

You’ve found the perfect solution. You’re excited about it.

However, you’ve committed a rudimentary mistake which is going to make things much harder for you when trying to sign the contract…

You’ve committed a cardinal sin you often accuse others of committing with procurement. The shoe is on the other foot this time…

What did you do that was so bad?

You forgot to involve the IT department from the beginning!

How could you?! This happens to you all the time when the shoe is on the other foot and the business negotiates contracts without you…

This is ironic unconscious hubris…

So, how can you fix it?

Here’s what you need to know to patch things up with IT (or hopefully, if I’m catching you earlier in the story and this just helps you get IT onboard from the start)…

When selecting software, especially at the enterprise level, IT is just like Procurement. They are trying to meet the business’ needs while maximizing cost efficiency. The guiding principles to do this are:

• Minimizing the number of applications in the corporate application portfolio. If the company already has licenses for software that does what you need on paper, you’re going to need to make a great case for another software with similar functionalities. Why? You *should* be able to use the software already on the books.

• Minimizing the number of interfaces between systems. Interfaces are expensive to build and maintain (although this is getting better with open APIs). *If* you can eliminate interfaces from the start by not buying niche software in the first place, great! This is why ERPs are still very attractive from an IT standpoint. 1 application to rule them all — without interfaces to support!

• Minimizing enterprise risks (e.g. cybersecurity and continuity). Major vendors *should* have robust security measures and compliance frameworks, reducing the risk of breaches and ensuring adherence to regulations. Introducing third-party niche software *can* introduce vulnerabilities and complicate compliance management.

• Minimizing implementation, maintenance and support costs. More widely, supporting applications both functionally (“how do I use this software?”) and technically (“my data isn’t getting from one system to the other” or “I need the behavior of X system to change”) is *generally* the most expensive part of IT. A few principles *usually* help drive these costs down:

  • Standardizing your “stack”: If you can buy a large chunk of your mission critical applications from a single big vendor (e.g. SAP, Oracle, etc.), then everything *should* theoretically work better because it’s all built on similar technology and supported by a single organization.

  • Scalability and future-proofing: Big stack vendors *should* continuously innovate and update their offerings. Sticking to these platforms *should* ensure the software will scale with the company’s growth and adapt to future technological advancements. With niche solutions, you introduce a risk that they might become obsolete, get acquired or require costly migrations.

  • User Experience and Training: Consistent user interfaces and workflows across standardized applications *should* enhance user experience and reduce training time and complexity. Non-standard software introduces variability, which *can* increase the learning curve and potentially lead to user frustration and decreased productivity.

In the end, IT is trying to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for the business’ IT landscape. And, disparate systems *often* lead to higher costs due to multiple licenses, vendor contracts, and integration expenses.

So, if you want to get IT onside for a niche ProcureTech software implementation, you need to prove how all those conditional terms above (if, can, should, might, etc.) are not true in your specific situation (making the TCO equal or better with your solution).

Either that or, if the TCO is not equal or better, you need to prove that the Return on Investment (ROI) from the niche application is an order of magnitude better than the alternative and justifies IT going against its guiding principles…

If you want IT “onside”, you need to start “speaking IT”…

Hopefully the above has given you a few threads to pull on to do just that.

Good luck!

What do you think? Would you add anything else?

Leave a comment with your thoughts below 👇

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