The Most Forgotten Stakeholder in ProcureTech

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Hi readers,

I got some great feedback on my ProcureTech Market Taxonomy draft last week. Thank you!

I’m already working on a second version that I will publish shortly. The objective is to have a one-pager with a maximum of 3 levels that can be used to classify/encapsulate all 400+ software solutions currently available on the procurement technology market.

If this is of interest, could open it with a solution in mind (maybe a ProcureTech product you’re currently using). If you can’t figure out where it fits within 10 seconds, reply to this email and give me your example.

I want to help clarify the ecosystem for everyone involved. If it’s good enough, I’m hoping others will adopt it!

More details here…

Otherwise, onto this week’s newsletter!

📰 In this week’s edition:

• 🌐 Webinar: How to use Intake and Orchestration with SAP (sponsored)

• 📋 5 procurement jobs that caught my eye

• 🏆 The Road to the ProcureTech Cup : Episode 8

• 🌙 The Most Forgotten Stakeholder in ProcureTech

Let me know what you thought in the poll at the bottom of this email.
Your feedback shapes the content of this newsletter.

ICYMI 👀: My best Linkedin post of the week:
When building a spend cube for Spend Analysis, you need to consider 5 dimensions…

Note: Some of the content above is only available in the email version of this newsletter. Don’t miss out! Sign up for free to get the next edition.

Tonight’s newsletter is sponsored by…

Does your organization use SAP, Coupa, Oracle, or any other kind of P2P or ERP platform?

If so, join us on Wednesday, October 30th, at 10am PT for a live, in-depth webinar featuring Matt Aaronson, Director of Product Marketing at Tonkean, and Joël Collin-Demers, Consulting Principal at Pure Procurement. 

Matt and Joël will break down how to get started leveraging intake and orchestration technology, along with why you should consider it.

Leaving the webinar, you’ll be ready to use intake and orchestration to:

• Significantly increase requester adoption of procurement processes

• Improve the overall quality of procurement work

• Reduce “request-to-purchase” cycle times

• Increase spend under management for the organization.

Participants will also get privileged access to a new detailed ebook on the topic as well.

Don’t miss it!

🏆 Road to the ProcureTech Cup

This Week’s Episode

Join me as Opstream comes on the show to demo their Procurement Intake and Process Orchestration platform.

Opstream isn’t afraid of talking about direct procurement intake scenarios, so I'm looking forward to this discussion!

Last Week’s Episode

Anvil Analytical demoed their functionality-packed Spend Analytics platform last Friday.

They impressed with their platform!

If you missed it and want to watch the replay, pick you poison:

🌙 Sunday Night Note

The Most Forgotten Stakeholder in ProcureTech

Do you know who most procurement teams forget to properly involve when implementing procurement systems?

Believe it or not: it’s your suppliers!

Typically, if you have a low digital procurement maturity in your business, you’re used to transacting with vendors via documents (for example, with PDF requests for proposals (RFP), contracts, purchase orders or invoices).

This is relatively easy. You produce the documents and you metaphorically “throw them over the fence” to the supplier who figures out how to enter the required information in their system without you. They are the interface between your system and theirs, so to speak…

A similar thing happens when they send you their RFP response, invoice or other documents. You get the documents and your team interprets the information and figures out how to “make them fit” in your systems, where applicable.

However, when it’s time to automate, digitalize and integrate with supplier systems as part of digital transformation initiatives, you can’t do that anymore…

Your relationship is about to change…

When you setup system-to-system interfaces, you literally need to be on the same page as your supplier concerning how you will be sending EVERY SINGLE PIECE of information.

Together, you have to define:

• How many pieces of information does your supplier need from you to be able to enter your purchase order in their system?

• What does each field’s information represent?

• What is the maximum length of each field?

• Is each field unique (e.g. at the header level of a document) OR can it be repeated (e.g. at the line-item level of a document)?

• What kind of communication protocol will be used? cXML, EDI, web service, etc.? (Your IT team can help you out with this one…)

If you’ve never set up interfaces between systems before, these are all questions you and your suppliers have never had to ask yourselves…

You now see why including suppliers (and their IT 😅) as key stakeholders in your digital procurement projects is so important... Suppliers need to play a significant role in ensuring that end-to-end digital procurement processes are streamlined, efficient, and generate value. Forgetting to involve suppliers properly can lead to misalignments, delays, cost implications and a drag on benefits...

Your key suppliers should, at the very minimum, be included in the planning and testing phases of your digital procurement initiatives. They might have things to “build” on their side as well.

All other suppliers affected by the scope of your project need to be catered to with a dedicated change management plan to ensure adoption of your solution. Otherwise, expect implementation and adoption issues down the line.

It’s also important to realize that not all suppliers are created equal…

As you mature in your procurement function’s digital journey, you will require ever more sophisticated technical capabilities from your suppliers in order to support a new, more mature end-to-end business process.

For example, should you want to start supporting electronic confirmations of purchase orders or electronic advanced shipment notices, you need suppliers to support these capabilities in addition to yourself.

It is not all suppliers that will have these capabilities ready when you need them… They have their own employees, third parties and IT departments to deal with… They need to be considered and brought along on the journey if you want to be successful.

Does one of your suppliers come to mind when I say that?

Go give them a call 📞!

💭 Quote of the Week

1. Pure Procurement Premium — Get access to Deep Dive guides and templates to get your digital procurement initiatives right.

2. Work with me — I’ve been helping global procurement teams digitalize their processes and practices for 12+ years.

3. Reach 10,000+ Pure Procurement readers — You have something to share with digitally-minded procurement professionals?