Your Suppliers Are Going to Hate You for This...

Well... It didn't take long for this Sunday night post to get difficult to write...

We transferred my son from his crib to a proper bed this weekend... It was time. He had been asking for multiple weeks... We delayed it because our daughter was a 'get up 25 times before falling asleep every night for 9 months' type of child. We tried everything... Eventually, it just fizzled out. I didn't know if I had the mental fortitude to go through that again...😅 (feel free to drop a comment with the magic formula if you’ve got it…)

So, I'm writing this Sunday Night Note from the hallway by his room. He's gotten up 5 times but I've got a good stretch going... Let's hope this is it! 🤞

I... *footsteps*... hold on... (2 mins later)

Well, that wasn't it... Wish me luck! I hope he’s not going for a family record…

In the meantime, this week's post is inspired by a conversation I had with a client last week. Your suppliers are often key stakeholders in your Procurement digitalization initiative (depending on your scope). When this is the case, they need to be included in your change management plan or your benefits will suffer... Details below.

Have a great week ahead.

Best,

Joël

P.S. This month’s deep dive article, usually reserved for paid subscribers, is available to everyone thanks to the folks at Tonkean. It’s still my unvarnished personal take on a ProcureTech topic, but one that Tonkean wants more people to learn about (Process Orchestration technology in Procurement in this case). Head over to see the type of content a paid subscription gets you.

Don’t Forget About ‘Supplier Experience’

In the quest for a higher maturity Procurement organization, we often turn to technology seeking improved user experience to drive higher adoption of our processes and strategies. Ultimately, it’s about maximizing the benefits delivered to the business. Given there are 400+ active software vendors in the ProcureTech space, it’s possible to 'mix and match' different tools to keep getting more juice out of the same orange.

However, we often neglect to consider the impact of doing this on one of the most important stakeholder groups in the end-to-end Procurement process: vendors. Remember, you are but one of many of their customers trying to optimize their Procurement process. It’s already ‘Death by Portal’ for vendors if you do everything perfectly because different customers use different portal technology…

Consider this:

If/When you digitalize your entire Procurement value chain, you’ll be able to collaborate with your vendors on the following documents (maybe a bit more, maybe a bit less depending on your context):

Right now, if you’re at “zero digitalization”, you’re sharing this information via email. This is suboptimal but it’s all in one place and email search is pretty powerful when you’re in a bind…

So let’s say you start along your journey and implement a Sourcing tool from software vendor #1. Then, a Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) tool from vendor #2. You’ve already got a purchasing (P2P) tool from ERP vendor #3. If you’ve gone ahead with the “portal” interface from each tool, a supplier now has to interact with you through 3 different portals over his lifecycle. Things are starting to get complicated…

My point: This might be fine or it might not be. You context (volume, complexity, etc.) will dictate if integrating all your tools into a central supplier portal is needed. However, your ‘supplier experience’ should be a conscious design decision. Otherwise, you’re in for unhappy surprises down the line…

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